Biofuels: The Future of Waste Management

A new method of waste management is on the horizon and its name is biofuel. The has been a recent breakthrough in biofuel technology that allows agricultural waste to be converted in to alternative fuels. Over the past few years biofuel production has been limited to only a handful of small pilot production plants. However recently two companies have come together to create the first large scale biofuel production plant on the planet. The process will consist of collecting wood garbage from farms and paper waste from papers as well as residential households. The fuels created will create only a mere one-sixth of the carbon dioxide to an equivalent amount of petroleum.

Biofuels are created by taking biomass such as algae, plants, wood, or agricultural waste and stripping all of the available oxygen from it. The remaining element are hydrogen and carbon and together they create compounds called hydrocarbons. These hydrocarbons contain stored chemical energy from photochemical reactions during photosynthesis while the biomass was alive. The biofuel that is created from this process is called Celluosic ethanol. This process created renewable energy while not diverting food away from animals and humans


For more information on biofuels visit
http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/biofuel-profile/