UNDERSTANDING of BIOFUELS

Monday 30 January 2012 | rachmad afriantoro at 08:05 |

Biofuel is fuel or energy source derived from organic materials, either from animal or plant. So the definition is broad enough that biofuels include fuel made from plants like any animal.
In contrast to fuel the already familiar with our daily lives that is gasoline and diesel derived from petroleum, biofuels have the properties can be updated, meaning that these fuels can be made by humans from materials that can be grown or cultured.
Long story short, biofuels are created to replace the existing fuel, so humans create biofuels to substitute biofuels for gasoline and diesel fuel substitute.

Biofuel substitutes for gasoline

Biofuel substitutes for gasoline usually is ethanol; To avoid long complicated explanations, I think it is quite clear that we know alcohol (alcohol to wash wounds and alcohol in liquor) actually is one variant of chemicals that have a "close family" that is ethanol. Brazil is a country that has been successfully producing and utilizing these ethanol. The raw material they use is sugar cane.

Thus, the stems and leaves of plants can be used well into ethanol feedstock; Imagine that the waste from your garden can be converted to fuel your car.

Many car engines that can not directly use ethanol as fuel because the engine is designed to use gasoline and ethanol as a fuel is not. To ease the transition and avoid the use of the new engine design, people try to mix gasoline with ethanol, which turned out to be used on car engines quite well.

Biofuel substitute for diesel

Oil is chemically modified biofuel - called biodiesel - are more likely to be used in diesel engines without engine modification.

Modification process - a process called transesterification - a type of alcohol use as well as one of the reactants. Type of alcohol used is methanol or ethanol.

Biodiesel is sold at some gas stations Pertamina is from 10% FAME and 90% petroleum diesel, or the so-called B10.