Going Green | All About Biofuels

Biofuels are a promising way of reducing a country’s dependence on foreign oil and becoming more energy independent. They are the perfect example of renewable energy, as to get more biofuel, all you have to do is grow more plants, or any source of carbon. Many countries around the world are supportive of this renewable energy, and as there are so many sources of biofuel, researchers are still trying to figure out which one can work the best.

What distinguishes biofuels from fossil fuels, which are also carbon sources, is that mass used to make the biofuel comes from recently dead biological material, as opposed to fossil fuels which come from matter that was millions of years old. All that burning fossil fuels does is release carbon back in to the atmosphere, which is bad for the planet. When you grow plants for biofuel, they remove carbon dioxide from the environment, and although they release it when burned, there is theoretically no net increase in environmental carbon dioxide. Due to the fact that there are more factors than simply the removal and release of carbon dioxide, in practice, there often is a carbon gain of some sort, but smaller than petroleum.

Ethanol, one of the most popular biofuels, is made primarily from corn. Ethanol is synthesized by depriving the starch in corn of oxygen, thereby inducing yeast fermentation, which converts sugars into energy. One of the waste products of this conversion is ethanol. However, the energy used to convert corn into ethanol is almost the same as the energy gained from ethanol, making corn-based ethanol a quite inefficient biofuel. Since it is produced on such a large scale, the energy gains are sufficiently measurable, but higher efficiency is desperately needed. As scientists research applications of biofuels further, their feasibility will grow proportionally.