Biodiesel and ethanol are both biofuels: fuels produced from organic matter. As global warming worsens and our oil supply dwindles, biodiesel and ethanol have both been touted as the fuels of the future. They are purported to be renewable, and clean.

Because these similarities, people frequently confuse ethanol with biodiesel, and vice versa. Ethanol and biodiesel are completely different substances, with completely different properties. For one, ethanol is an alcohol. It is the alcohol found in beer, wine, vodka, etc.

If you drank biodiesel, on the other hand, you would most likely suffer harm. Biodiesel is an ester: a substance composed of an alcohol bonded with a fatty acid. The alcohol is usually ethanol, or methanol, also known as wood alcohol. The fatty acid is obtained from animal fats or plant oils.

So how is ethanol, the fuel, made? The same way that drinking alcohol is made: fermentation. Farmers grow high sugar or high starch crops, such as sugar cane. The sugar cane is juiced, and the juice is allowed to ferment. The alcohol is then purified.

Biodiesel is also made from plant matter. However, instead of sugary plants, crops with high oil content are favoured, such as rapeseed, palm trees, and corn. The crops are harvested and their oil extracted. The oil is then reacted with ethanol or methanol, to produce biodiesel.

The processes above describe making ethanol and biodiesel from new raw materials, as opposed to waste matter. It is possible to make both ethanol and biodiesel from waste. Compost can be fermented and ethanol extracted. Instead of using fresh oil, biodiesel manufacturers sometimes use waste oil from fast food restaurants.

If you live in a major city in North America, chances are 15% of the fuel you receive at the gas station is ethanol. The 15-85 mixture of alcohol and standard gasoline, lovingly nicknamed gasohol, has become the convention. It can run in any normal gasoline engine, with no modifications required.

Biodiesel cannot be used with a gasoline engine. It requires a diesel engine—any conventional diesel engine. Before switching over to biodiesel, however, ensure that your fuel lines are not made from natural rubber. Biodiesel will simply dissolve the hosing.

Engines in North America are predominantly gasoline-oriented. For this reason, gasoline pumps are much more popular than diesel pumps in North America. To use ethanol for your car, you simply need to visit your local gas station. To find biodiesel, however, you need to look around. Currently biodiesel is not mass produced in either Canada or the United States. Infrastructure for the transportation of biodiesel is not widespread. Awareness and demand for biodiesel is also low.

Consequently, you may need to travel a few miles before you can find a biodiesel station. Even then, the cost per litre is 250% that of gasohol. The low demand and its high price lead each other around in a vicious cycle. Which one is better for the environment? That is debatable. Both are renewable energy sources that come from organic matter. For this reason, their advantages and drawbacks are quite similar. In the end, however, ethanol is just easier to find.

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If you’re concerned about the constantly rising price of vehicle fuel, but still want to use products that are all natural to power your car, you’ll definitely want to learn more about biofuels. You can find many of these fuels in the products that you use every day, For example, vehicle fuel sold in the European Union contains 5% biofuel by law.

Biofuels are defined as a solid, liquid, or gas fuel that is made from biological materials that have recently died. This makes them different from fossil fuels, which are produced from biological animals and plants that have died years ago.

The most common source of biofuels are photosynthetic plants, and all over the world, these fuels are used to power stoves and some vehicles. This industry is starting to grow tremendously in Europe and Asia, and parts of the Americas are starting to follow this trend as well.

There are two main ways to produce biofuels; one is growing crops that have a high sugar content, such as sweet sorghum, sugar cane or sugar beet. Corn starch is also used to create this fuel, and after these crops have grown, yeast fermentation will produce ethyl alcohol, or ethanol.

The second method in getting the biofuels that you need is to grow plants that have high amounts of vegetable oil; these plants include soybeans, algae, or oil palm.

When the oils are brought to a high temperature, they can be burned directly in a diesel engine. Chemically processing the oils produces biodiesel.

In Britain, some enterprising characters collect the cooking oil from their local fish and chip shops. They then filter it using specialist equipment, add an additive and then put it into diesel vehicles

Biofuels have been the center of a number of global economic debates, such as the issue of carbon emissions levels in the air, and the food versus fuel debate.

The impact that biofuels have on water resources is also a topic of discussion between government officials and farmers, since the materials needed to make these fuels are completely natural.

Scientists and economists are also looking for way to make sure that soil erosion is reduced while biofuel is being created, and of course, the cost of oil prices is a consideration as well.

Getting a car that will only use natural fuels will help to make progress when it comes to bettering the air quality in the environment, which can preserve the natural resources in the world as well.

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As you’re biting into that nice, juicy king-size burger, have you ever thought how much you’re contributing to global warming?

I hadn’t. Cattle, though, are a major problem for the environment. As cows are busy munching away in their pastures, their multiple stomachs are producing methane.

Methane is a particularly potent greenhouse gas, 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide for global warming. According to The Journal of Animal Science, livestock produce between 250 and 500 litres of methane every single day! At the top end of the estimate, that enough to fill 250 large bottles of Coke.

And what’s worse, there are estimated to be 1.5 billion livestock around the globe. If the average animal produces 350 litres of methane daily, then that’s 525 billion litres of methane being released into the atmosphere each day. And then there are about a billion sheep and 800 million goats.

What about pigs? There are a billion pigs, but they produce much less methane than cows.

As countries have got richer, demand for meat has increased in the last 50 years by about 500 per cent.

The livestock sector is by far the single largest use by humans of land. Grazing occupies 26 percent of the Earth’s terrestrial surface, while feed crop production requires about a third of all arable land.

Expansion of grazing land for livestock is a key factor in deforestation, especially in Latin America. Some 70 percent of previously forested land in the Amazon is used as pasture, and feed crops cover a large part of the reminder. About 70 percent of all grazing land in dry areas is considered degraded, mostly because of overgrazing, compaction and erosion attributable to livestock activity.

There are other serious problems with livestock that contribute to global warming. The United Nations’ Food & Agriculture Organization (UN FAO) estimated that livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, a bigger share than that of transport.

Livestock farming accounts for nine percent of man-made carbon dioxide emissions, most of it due to expansion of pastures and arable land for feed crops. It generates even bigger shares of emissions of other gases with greater potential to warm the atmosphere: as much as 37 percent of methane from humans’ activities, mostly from fermentation by cows and other ruminants, and 65 percent of nitrous oxide created by man’s activities, mostly from manure.

According to the UN FAO, the average American eats about 275 pounds of meat per year (more than any other country). The average Chinese eats 108 pounds per year (Earth Policy Insitute, 2005). According to a 2005 FAO study on meat consumption between 1998 – 2002, the average meat consumption per Chinese is 52 kg, compared to Americans at 125 kg, and Britain at 80 kg.   note:  there are smaller countries which (on average, per person) consume a little more meat than the US – 300 mil. people (for example: New Zealand – 4 mil. people, Denmark 5.5 mil. people, and some countries which consume around the same amount of meat. If the whole world ate meat at the American rate, only 2/5 of the world’s population (2.5 billion people) would be fed (Lester Brown).

Some countries are taking the problem seriously. For example, Germany’s environment agency has recommended that Germans should eat less meat, if they want to lower their carbon footprint and stop global warming.

Speaking at Berlin’s Grüne Woche (Green Week), Andreas Troge, president of the UBA (Germany’s environment agency) said:

“We must rethink our high meat consumption. I recommend people return to the Sunday roast and to an orientation of their eating habits around those of Mediterranean countries.”

Troge said that agriculture caused 15% of Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions. Meat production, he explained, was the most energy-intensive form of farming. Germans derive a high percentage of their calories from meat, 39% compared to the Italians’ 25%.

The US Environmental Protection Agency wanted to tax cattle, but this plan seems to have been dropped after protests from the powerful farming lobby.

So next time I’m in the supermarket, Quorn burgers are going in my basket!

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