Green Transportation Fuels As a Premium Renewable Energy Source

By | February 2, 2014

The demand for energy is suspected to double in the next two decades yet the energy supply is gradually decreasing. This is where renewable and green energy take place, meaning to create energy especially for transportation fuels like diesel, gasoline and jet fuel as they will become critical as fossil fuel reserves deplete around the world.

Renewable energy sources and the process of converting it into energy has become huge talk lately. Rapid Thermal Process or pyrolysis technology which is used for converting biomass into energy is an important process in producing renewable transport fuels that would benefit the companies where it can economically produce the value-added products as well as utilizing the byproducts without having additional operational costs.

By using proprietary technology developed by refineries, bio-oil can be further processed to become green gasoline, diesel and jet fuels. Pyrolysis oil is a synthetic fuel under research as alternate for petroleum. It is extracted by biomass to liquid technology of destructive distillation from dried biomass in a reactor at a very high temperature (500°C) with subsequent cooling. Pyrolytic oil or bio-oil that derived from pyrolysis technology is a kind of tar and normally contains too high levels of oxygen to be a hydrocarbon. Because of the chemical properties it is distinctly different from similar petroleum products.

From an economic standpoint it may be interesting to first recover valuable bio-chemicals from the bio-oil. The remainder of the bio-oil or what we called byproduct can then be combusted to generate electricity or converted to a syngas from which chemicals and clean fuels can be synthesized. These byproducts are normally used continuously in the pyrolysis technology, or rapid thermal processing (RTP™). In addition, the technology for converting bio-oil to transportation fuels is currently in commercial-scale development and will be available in 2012.

Another example of green transportation fuels is biodiesel. It is meant to be used in standard diesel engines and thus distinct from the vegetable and waste oils used to fuel converted diesel engines. Biodiesel can be used alone, or blended with petrodiesel. It is also a new source of renewable energy since the production of biodiesel can be varied. Mostly it derived from agricultural wastes and petroleum feedstock.

From here it can be said that green transportation fuels are capable in replacing the current transportation fuels as the composition is nearly same and also it is safer and economically efficient. It is more environmental friendly as it is derived from plants.

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