A Biofuel Overview
Biofuel is now emerging as one of the leading renewable energy resource that ultimately aims to replace diesel and gasoline as a transportation fuel. Oil deposits are formed from the biomass that has been compressed below the surface of earth since billions of years. Now, as source of petroleum products is biological, then why isn’t this fuel termed as biofuel?
Firstly, we get biofuels from a recent biomass as opposed to biomass that has remained compressed since millions of years. A main benefit of converting to bio-based fuel instead of oil-based fuels is to successfully reduce the carbon emissions. In case of biofuels that are produced using corn or sugarcane, the replacement of biomass takes place in a year when new crop arrives. This new biomass is almost equivalent to the total carbon emitted when that particular biofuel is utilized. Therefore, the total carbon emission from this cycle is almost zero and carbon cycle takes just a year to complete.
On the other hand, petroleum needs billions of years for production and replacement cycle for the petroleum products is millions of years instead of just one crop cycle!
Hence, it is this particular difference in their carbon cycle that differentiates petroleum products from biofuels and makes latter a much preferred choice as an eco-friendly fuel.