Biodiesel: A Fuel for the Immediate Future?

Note: Biodiesel is a fuel made from organic plants such as soybean, hemp, flax, or corn. It can be made in one's home or purchased from select distributors worldwide. It can be used, with minor limitations, as a direct replacement for standard petroleum diesel fuel, or combined with the latter in a blend, usually denoted a Bxx with the variable being the amount of biodiesel added to petroleum diesel such as the fairly standard B20 grade which is 80% petroleum and 20% biodiesel.

Our current dependence on fossil fuels used in gasoline powered vehicles, could over the short term be decreased, mitigated, and migrated to a biodiesel based engine power plant in heavy vehicles, boats, electrical power plants, and personal vehicles. While hydrogen powered engines may eventually become a feasible option, there is no technology on the horizon for attaining a preponderance of these type engines in the near future, especially for personal vehicles. Biodiesel could become the fuel source for our present and immediate future vehicle usage, and the bridge to higher level fueling technologies which may become available with additional research.

Over a hundred years ago, Dr. Diesel's original diesel engine ran on a blend of vegetable oils, not significantly different than biodiesel. Petroleum based fuels became common as the preferred basis of diesel fuel used in engines based on several economic and technical factors; but given the current level of equipment sophistication the blending or complete replacement of petroleum products in diesel fuels can be achieved by processors throughout the develped world now, if there were sufficient support for the migration.

Unlike fossil fuels, biodiesel can be replenished by planting more crops, harvesting, and processing within the same year. Ethanol production in the US has been estimated at three billion gallons for 2004 while biodiesel is estimated at only thirty five million gallons. However, this is more a function of policy and politics rather than the intrinsic value of each fuel.

"Rapeseed (Brassica Napus), or canola, produces about 2,000 pounds of seed per acre, yielding about 100 gallons of vegetable oil for fuel, and 1,200 pounds of high-protein meal (seedcake) that can be used for livestock feed or as an organic fertilizer.

The seedcake could also be used to make ethanol, and so could the several tons of crop wastes.

Yields from soybeans are about 60 gallons per acre, from coconuts more than 200 gallons per acre, and from oil palms more than 500 gallons per acre."

Furthermore "biodiesel is the only alternative fuel to have fully completed the health effects testing requirements of the Clean Air Act. The use of biodiesel in a conventional diesel engine results in substantial reduction of unburned hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, and particulate matter compared to emissions from diesel fuel. In addition, the exhaust emissions of sulfur oxides and sulfates (major components of acid rain) from biodiesel are essentially eliminated compared to diesel."

For a more complete introduction to biodiesel fuels you can start here.