Bio fuels and bio diesels are the possible environmental friendly alternative sources of energy, for the predominantly used fossil fuels. Biofuel has been in use worldwide particularly in Europe. Biofuel can be produced from oilseed plants like oil palm (in Malaysia and Indonesia), coconut (in the Philippines, Vanuatu and Marshall Islands), rapeseed (in Europe and Canada) and soybean (in the U.S.). It also can be produced from jatropha seeds, pongamia seeds or from any other non edible oil seeds. Bio fuels reduce the dependency on imported petroleum products, save valuable foreign exchange as well as create employment opportunities in agricultural sector by way of value added agricultural products.
Bio diesel is the only alterative fuel that can be used directly in existing diesel engine with no modifications. It has similar properties of petroleum diesel fuel. Therefore, biodiesel can also be blended and used in any ratio with petrol diesel fuels. In the United States alone, many federal and state fleet vehicles are already running on biodiesel blends with the existing diesel engines. The amount of bio diesel blended into petroleum diesel fuel can fluctuate such as 10%, 20% or more percentage, based on the price of vegetable oil and crude oil at that time.
Several kinds of bio diesels are now available. Usually biodiesel is an ester or an oxygenate, made from the oil seeds and methanol. But non-oxygenate (alkane) biodiesel, is also available. That is biomass-to-liquid (BTL) fuel. Sometimes unrefined vegetable oil is also called “biodiesel”. Biodiesel is defined as mono alkyl esters of vegetable oils or animal fats and is being produced or used commercially in numerous countries around the world, including the United States, Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Malaysia, and Sweden etc. Today, it is a promising alternative fuel for compression ignition (diesel) engines. The present status and future strategies are discussed in the paper.
