Bio-Fuel

International day for bio diesel

August 10^th is the international Biodiesel day. it is celebrated worldwide in honour of the  prime model of an engine that ran on peanut oil, in 1893. This event triggered the development of biodiesel as an alternate to petrol or gasoline

1977 witnessed a Brazilian scientist Expedito Parente inventing and submitting for a patent of an industrial process to produce biodiesel.  Tecbio worldwide is working on standardizing this fuel in collaboration with NASA and Boeing. This is referred to as bio-kerosene.

South Africa initiated the use of transesterified sunflower oil as fuel for cars in 1979. This technology was obtained by Austria from South Africa so that a biodiesel plant to be erected, through 1990 many European countries erected plants to produce biodiesel, as of now quite a few service stations across Europe provide 100% biodiesel.

What is biodiesel?

Biodiesel is renewable biodegradable fuel manufactured domestically from vegetable oils, animal fats or recycled restaurant grease. It is a cleaner burning option for petroleum diesel fuel, and meets both the biomass based diesel and overall advanced bio fuel requirement of renewable fuel standard.

The bio feed or source oils could come from a variety of oils, some of those being

• Soyabean which is most commonly used. Mustard, jojoba, Palm oil, coconut, hemp are also used.
• Waste vegetable oil
• Animal fats like tallow, lard, yellow grease and the by products from the production of Omega 3 fatty acids.
• Algae that are grown using waste materials like sewage and without displacing land currently used for food production.
• Oil from halophytes such as salicornia bigelovii that can be grown using saltwater in coastal areas where conventional crops cannot be grown. The yields from this equals the yield of soybeans and other oilseeds grown using freshwater irrigation.
• Sewage slugde this is an option that is attracting interests from companies like waste management and start-ups like infoSpi.

Biodiesel is beneficial both economically and environmentally, there is a huge reduction in green house gas emissions, deforestations, pollutions and the rate of biodegradation.

What Biodiesel means

• Energy independence to economically challenged countries. For biodiesel can be used in any existing diesel engines.
• Smaller trade deficit – instead of importing natural resources we can convert our own living resource power, we can to the tropics for bio-fuels this saves foreign exchange ,strengthens the national economic allows the country to serve its neediest citizens.
• Economic growth is boosted as new markets are created for agricultural products and stimulate rural economy. This becomes very potent because two thirds the population of developing countries derive their incomes from agriculture. Many small farmers are too small to compete with the global market, this will allow them supplement their income. At the national level it would mean, developing a new industry and creating new jobs.
• Biofuel also means less pollution as it burns more cleanly than gasoline or diesel.
• Biofuel means less global warming, for the carbon in the fuel is from the atmosphere of where the plant grew. While fossil fuel adds huge amount of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere while Bio-fuel brings it down considerably, all most 75% cleaner there are cases where it has reached zero carbon dioxide emission
• Biofuel exhaust is not offensive and does not irritate the eye or skin. If cooking oil is used there chances that you will get a whiff of your favourite food. J

To sum it up

• Biodiesel is clean burning fuel
• It does not have any toxic emission like the mineral diesel
• It can be made from any vegetable oil such as Soya, Rice Bran, Canola, Palm, Coconut, mustard or animal fat like lard or tallow.
• Biodiesel can be a complete substitute for mineral based diesel.
• Biodiesel is methyl ester converted from fats of natural origin into a chemical process and it is not vegetable oil.
• It is intended to be used as replacement for petroleum diesel or can be blended into the petroleum diesel in various proportions.
• Biofuel can be used in a diesel engine without having to modify it.
• The exhaust emission and the pollution in it reduces almost by 75%.
• Biofuel is biodegradable.

For more information log to:

• bdai.org.in
• http://mnre.gov.in/
• http://www.biodieseltechnologiesindia.com/index.html