Butanol has been established as one of the better options for transport vehicle fuels. Butanol is not soluble in water and also has more energy content compared to ethanol.

The popular choice as raw material to make butanol are cane sugar and starch but experts at Aalto University made use of lignocellulose or more commonly known as wood biomass. This source can be considered as a better choice as it does not compete with human food needs and production.

Wood biomass consists of lignin, hemicellulose, and cellulose as its basic substances. The first two substances are good sources of nutrition for the microbes and therefore bioprocessing is highly probable. When the biomass of wood is boiled in a mixture of sulphur dioxide, alcohol, and water, the substances of wood are separated. The cellulose portion can be used for paper, other products can be crafted from the non-cellulose part, and the hemicellulose is a good raw material for microbes to produce other chemicals.

By 2020, the European Union requires that all fuel should have 10% biofuel component. Butanol can be added to transportation fuel that we use today without the need to do a lot of modification to the ordinary combustion engine. The 20% butanol blend of fuel results to lower harmful emissions compared to ordinary fossil fuel.

Comparing the use of butanol with ethanol, the latter’s blend of fuel results to higher level of odor nuisances in the air. Experts look into the use of butanol in combo with a pulp plant in the biorefinery setup to improve energy use and production of biofuel.

The current project in the university in Finland is to improve the refining value of residues which normally cannot be further utilized.

The priority of the company is to increase the ethanol production with investments of around $1.9 billion. In collaboration with their partners, the company is looking to produce around 1.5 billion gallons in 2015 which is about 12% of the market. The company will be the top producer in the domestic market if they reach this goal.

Petrobras will use 70% of the investments in the ethanol segment to make new ethanol, construct plants, put up distilleries, and renewal of the plantation. The investments will be done with partners like Nova Fronteira, Total Agroindustria Canavieira, and Guarani.

On the biodiesel segment, the company is looking to maintain its domestic share of around 25% of the market thru their $00 million of investments. Petrobras has about 5 plants today with biodiesel volume expected to hit 700 million every year.

The $300 million that will be poured into research will be used primarily to develop second gen ethanol for industrial production.

The three new vehicles will be under a new brand, the BlueMotion Technologies. The range of cars under the umbrella will primarily be products that have low carbon dioxide emissions and efficient fuel consumption.

The BlueMotion Technologies will represent evolving solutions and systems that are still on the works like regenerative braking, stop-start system, hybrid systems, and electric drives.

The Passat BlueMotion features a start-stop system that passes the Euro-5 standards. The power plant of the new gen Passat BlueMotion can output 109 horsepower and has a mileage of 48 mpg. This car features lightweight wheels made from flow-formed steel.

The Blue TDI will be the first of its kind launched by Volkswagen. This car is set to meet the Euro-6 standards that will take effect in 2014. The car is equipped with an SCR catalytic converter to minimize harmful emissions to 80mg/km. Production will be ramping up as early as March. The Blue TDUI has a 2.0L engine that has an output of 141 horsepower. Mileage is at 45 mpg.

The TSI Ecofuel is scheduled for roll out early of 2009. The 148 horsepower engine is equipped with turbo and supercharge. These enable it to zoom from 0 to 100 km.h in just 9.7 seconds. The engine is coupled with a 7-speed transmission. A 4.4 kilogram load of natural gas can bring the car 100 kilometers from the starting point.

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In a joint venture with Nandan Biometrix, Ltd, the jatropha grower and Shapoorji Pallonji Co. Ltd, a construction company, the newly formed company Bharat Renewable Energy Ltd will be responsible for converting the jatropha to biodiesel. One million hectares of the plants will be planted and harvested in the next four years in response to the September 11th announcement by the Indian government to require a twenty percent mixture of bio fuels in all transportation fuels sold by the year 2017.

To keep valuable farmlands available for edible food sources, the government is encouraging organizations to use wastelands as growing areas. One such area, in which the national petroleum company has invested, is in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. To further encourage production of biodiesel, new policies allow for tax and duty concessions. In addition, the government has banned the importation of animal fats previously used as the raw materials to make biodiesel oil.

Unlike fossil fuels such as gasoline and diesel, biodiesel used to run these cute little Beetle cars, comes from discarded cooking oils. Imagine fueling a vehicle with a restaurant’s old vegetable oil used to cook French fries. Another aspect of the Bio-Beetle is that it also uses earth friendly coolants, synthetic oil, and non-toxic cleaners. The company employees wear organic cotton uniforms and the company mission is “to be the greenest and best rental car company on the planet”.

The company goal sounds like a grandiose ideal but considering the fact that the owners personally funded the development and realization of these Bio-Beetles with their own monies, it is a testament to their dedication to finding alternative fuel solutions. As funds allow, they purchase more cars for development to add to their eco rental fleet. And believe it or not, there are places to refuel the cars other than the rental agency itself.

In addition to discarded cooking oil, biodiesel can also be made with inferior oils that do not meet food quality standards and mixtures can be blended from more than one plant. The most common plants used to create the oils are safflower, castor, palm, olive, peanut, soy bean and mustard.

More info on the Bio Beetle Website at bio-beetle.com!

In modern diesel engines Biodiesel can be used in unadulterated form (B100) or may be mixed with petroleum diesel at any application. Biodiesel manufacture and use are increasing rapidly. Fueling stations make biodiesel willingly accessible to customers transversely in Europe, and progressively in Canada and USA.

Biodiesel can also be used as a heating fuel in household and saleable boilers, seldom known as bioheat. Biodiesel is normally formed by the transesterification of the animal fat or vegetable oil feedstock. A number of methods are used for carrying out this transesterification reaction together with the regular batch process, microwave methods, supercritical processes and ultrasonic methods

Biodiesel has a lot of environmentally valuable properties. The chief advantage of biodiesel is that it can be described as carbon neutral and it is quickly recyclable and totally safe, meaning spillages correspond to far a smaller amount of a threat than fossil diesel spillages. Biodiesel has an upper blaze point than fossil diesel and so is safer in the result of a collapse.