The future of biofuels

The recent years most analysts call a real biofuel boom. Europe has long placed a bet on it. According to the decision of the European Commission, by 2020, 20% of the energy consumed by the EU should be produced from renewable sources, and 14.4% of them come from biomass.

Biofuel energy sources tend to become more effective on key indicators than oil or gas.

The history of biofuels dates back to the development of butanol (butyl alcohol). Production of butanol in the world began in the 1910s. Then, bacteria Clostridia acetobutylicum was used for its production. However, butanol reached wide distribution only in the 1950s, when world oil prices began to rise. Butanol was first produced due to synthesis of chemical raw materials. Butanol gained grounds in the United States. However, based on chemical raw materials butanol could not be called biological fuel.

Today biological fuel is produced from products of agricultural origin and human livelihood organic waste. In other words, the raw material for biofuel is what so far was spewed out and created a huge pile of garbage and landfills across the planet. This is the main advantage of biofuels over traditional sources of energy.

Another significant advantage is the environmental friendliness of the biofuel combustion by-products in comparison with carcinogenic emissions of petrol and diesel engines.

But there are drawbacks. These include: low calorific value compared to gasoline; the higher cost of biofuel production; the corrosivity of biofuel oil the composition for those materials used in machine parts and mechanisms.

It is fair to say that technology development does not stand still, and scientists strive to simplify and cheapen the production of biofuel, at the same time to improve its energy characteristics for each particular type. There has been made a great progress in this direction.