I am looking for some views about will biodiesel have any scope or advantage as sustainable fuel for automobiles, when new technologies like electric vehicles and hydrogen fuel based technologies are making its mark in the commercial application?
Jetfuel and diesel are close, and bio-jetfuel is promising. It can be a regulated market with a significant fuel use, therefore, significant impact.
The other way around, if you produce bioil (e.g., by pyrolysis) and refine it, the most economic way to produce petrol, diesel, other biochemicals, and electricity for the productivity and keep the costs down.
The electric vehicles are popular for road transportation, but heavy machinery in mining, roading, agriculture, and forestry still run on diesel. In the case of forestry and agriculture, the feedstock is available as residue you otherwise need to manage, so producing biodiesel make even more sense (the feedstock has negative cost).
It is unfortunate when market decides which product will be used in future and which product will not. Biofuel is the most renewable fuel which, in many cases, are very eco-friendly. We have already make mistakes by using huge amount of fossil fuels. The resource of energy in electronic vehicles are non-renewable. We have to find out some alternative when they will about to be depleted completely. The scenario will same as today. Above that we need to introduce new type of operating systems to use electronic vehicles. There will be huge amount of waste generation. On the other hand biofuels can be used in existing engines.
So, I must say biofuels are way more better than those options. It is always better to go for permanent cure rather than instant relief.
In the current energy and market scenario, they should co-exist to meet the fuel demands. The battery world actually doesn't have that much excess capacity right now. Jeff Depew, CEO of battery maker Imara, estimates that, worldwide, battery makers can currently make about 720 million cylindrical 18650 lithium-ion batteries a year and 18650s account for around 85 percent of the output. If a large car maker decided to put out 100,000 plug-in cars, that would suck up 200 to 300 million of those cells. The future, well, belongs to the electric, making use of hydrogen mostly.
Eventually, we shall appreciate the hazards associated with each energy source and possibly settle for a mix. Imagine the level of pollution from lithium or lead if all vehicles are electric!
Obviously yes. But now people are much concerned about fuel cell and hydrogen fuel.
Each energy source has its own merits and demerits, be it biodiesel, electric or hydrogen.
But as an immediate replacement for the existing vehicles, biodiesel might be a good replacement for diesel.
To compare this alternative (biodiesel or electric vehicle), we must choose the goal. Example green energy for zero waste or green energy for cost efficiency. For this goal, we need to get decision with AHP (Analytic Hierarkhy Process) for multi criteria decision making and benefit cost ratio analysis
Undoubtedly biodiesels are green and renewable but still, such types of research work have not noticed in this domain which is capable of capturing global attention. Most of the research works are publication oriented which are limited up to the application different soft computing techniques and different percentages of bio-oils. I am not an expert on this but as a learner, I feel the approaches are traditional which needs to be revised.
The posted question needs answers several key issues, for instance: 1. How the electric energy would be produced - from coal, natural gas, solar, wind, etc., nuclear? Each of these might have different contributions to pollution. 2. What would be the future standing of internal combustion vehicles, and the diesel engines in particular, in comparison with other vehicles? 3. What kind of energy would be used predominantly for non-transportation purposes? 4. What would be the real contribution of algae to biomass energy and pollution? Combustion based energy production is more or less polluting and biodiesel use is not an exception. So, in the near future, until we find competitive non-combustion energy production, we would still use biodiesel, along hydrocarbon fuels. The change from the current to more advanced energy production and use would be gradual and an object of comparison and optimization of all available options.
There is a challenge, but the production of bio diesel still doesn't appear on the mass product.
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