According to the EPA, replacing fossil fuels with biofuels has the potential to reduce some undesirable aspects of fossil fuel production and use, including conventional and greenhouse gas (GHG) pollutant emissions, exhaustible resource depletion, and dependence on unstable foreign suppliers.
While biofuel technology is not perfected, it has evolved through several generations of significant advancements.
The predominant problem with first-generation biofuels is that they were derived from food crops (e.g., corn and sugar cane), which require fertilization, water, and soil, and thus directly compete with food production. Tight regulations on the use of pesticides and genetically modified crops further limit their utilization in sustainable transportation.
In order to mitigate these shortcomings, second-generation biofuels are derived from non-edible lignocellulose remnants of plants, which consist of up to 70% polymerized sugars and constitute the most abundant form of biomass on Earth.
These biofuels are attractive because their net carbon footprint (emitted carbon – consumed carbon) can be neutral or even negative and their generation from agricultural and forest residues or white wood chips provides economic advantages compared to crops.
But there’s a significant challenge here: Using lignocellulose for biofuel production requires energetically and financially costly extraction of fermentable sugars such as thermal, chemical, and/or biochemical pre-treatment.
Nonetheless, significant technological progress has since been made in the production of lignocellulosic biofuel toward a clean and economically viable process, including advances in energy crop engineering strategies, efficient degradation of lignocellulose, and simultaneous manufacturing of higher-value products.
Want to learn more? Tonex offers Fundamentals of Biofuels, a 2-day course where participants learn about the different types of biofuels along with the advantages and disadvantages of each.
Participants will also come away with a much better understanding of general plant science and how it relates to the creation of biofuels.
Tonex also offers several other courses in Renewable Energy, such as:
Fundamentals of Green Hydrogen
Hydrogen Fuel Cells and Combustion
Fundamentals of Distributed Energy Resource Management Systems
For more information, questions, comments, contact us.