(Draft Version)
Before the advent of plentiful, low-cost Middle Eastern petroleum in the years following World War I, U.S. motor vehicles burned a variety of locally produced biomass fuels. It was in order to improve and standardize the fuel supply for his new Model T, that Henry Ford built the first industrial scale ethanol fermentation plant in 1908 in Atchison, Kansas. While Ford campaigned to make ethanol the universal motor vehicle fuel, in Europe, Rudolph Diesel was developing a new engine capable of burning peanut, rapeseed and other virgin vegetable oils. He predicted that it would be of great benefit to farmers and would transform the economies of agricultural nations.
Today, with increasingly expensive and less secure petroleum supplies, and mounting evidence of the link between vehicle emissions, global warming and climate change, biofuels are again at the forefront of the nation’s agenda. They have particular importance as technologies for reducing pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles. Corn, soy and other biomass crops absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while emitting less carbon dioxide from the tailpipe during combustion. At present, most production and transport of biofuels is still powered by fossil fuels, but these emissions too will be reduced as more biofuels and biopower systems are applied to farming, production and transport of biofuels. >This section is currently under review
Current biofuels research and development focuses primarily in two areas. The first is Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), a cradle to grave evaluation of the energy and environmental costs and benefits of specific biofuels and production technologies, both in comparison with each other, and with fossil fuels.
The second focuses on increasing the production efficiencies and output of biofuels through research on production technologies. Ethanol production often requires different processing and fermentation technologies for each biomass feedstock used, with the result that the technology research is closely connected with current efforts to diversify ethanol biomass sources using new crops such as sugar beets, sugar cane, and cellulose from prairie grasses, fast growing trees, and agricultural and urban wastes. Biodiesel is typically produced from oilseed crops or waste fats and greases by a relatively simple conversion process, but this too may vary slightly with the fat type and content of the feedstock used. Some new sources for biodiesel, such as aquatic algae, may require very different production processes.