What Kinds of Waste By Products Do Alternative Fuels Create?
Posted on June 20th, 2011 by admin
“Going Green” seems to be the in words these days. No matter where you look, the new trend in this day and age seems to be environmentalism. Out of all the new products that are being geared towards achieving this, none gets as much attention as alternative fuels, or alternative power sources. The race seems to be on to find the magic cure for society’s dependency on fossil fuels. As a result, physicists and chemists around the world are working around the clock to come up with a viable and practical solution for mankind’s addiction to petroleum and coal based energy.
There are several alternative fuels being pushed to the forefront these days, but the two most common ones are ethanol and bio-diesel. Out of these two, ethanol is being used more. Ethanol is manufactured either from cane sugar or corn. Ethanol is a type of alcohol which means it requires a distillation process. This means the manufacturer will need huge vats filled with raw material, and it needs to be heated. This is where some environmentalist point out where the problem is. Heating large amounts of cane or corn juice requires energy, which some claim defeats the purpose. This is simply not true.
It is true that the manufacturing process requires energy. However, by using ethanol, the amount of waste created is far less than fossil fuels, even when you take into account the waste created by the manufacturing process. All this is even truer when it comes to bio-diesel. Bio-diesel can be manufactured from several different sources such as vegetable oil, peanut oil, and even animal fats. It is actually more efficient to use compared to ethanol. Unlike ethanol, which only has two primary sources, bio-diesel can be taken from several different sources. Unlike exhaust created by fossil fuels, ethanol and bio-diesel exhaust fumes are not nearly as toxic.