What do you think of when you read the term “biofuels”? Would you think “biofuels” as fuels that have to do with life? It is true that our daily living cannot function normally without fuels. We need fuels for cars, ships, airplanes and spacecrafts. Essentially, there are three kinds of fuels-fossil fuels, biofuels and nuclear fuels, and the often used fuels are fossil fuels. Even though fossil fuels are much easily accessible and cheaper than other fuels, they have their setbacks, such as air pollution, global warming, and depletion of non-renewable energy sources. Therefore, researchers are investing time and money to look into alternative energy sources, and biofuels are one of them. By doing more researches, biofuels, which are renewable energy sources, can be mass produced in an unconventional and better way, and eventually, they can replace fossil fuels.
Biofuels are promising renewable energy sources that can be produced in large quantity. Biofuels are categorized into bioethanol and biodiesel. Both can be used to fuel vehicles in their pure form. Biofuels are derived from biomass, which can be replenished. In addition, the biofuels are carbon neutral. Finally, the byproducts during the production of biofuel can be used in ways that benefit humans. For example, glycerin, a waste product of biodiesel, can be made useful to us in many ways. These reasons are main premises for large production of biofuels.
Nonetheless, there are problems with conventional biofuel production. Conventional biofuel productions are based on converting plant material into biofuels. A couple of the problems are deforestation and increasing the market prices of vegetables. Because of these issues, other ways of producing biofuel are investigated, such as using cyanobacteria and microalgae.
Comparing to consuming plants material, the benefits of using cyanobacteria to produce biofuels are: higher growth rate and reduce the usage of land. Thus, genetic engineers are set out to develop strains of cyanobacteria that would synthesize fatty acids, which can be converted to biofuels, with lower energy threshold and higher yield. Embedded below is a video that provides introduction to biofuel production using cyanobacteria.
In conclusion, biofuels are suitable alternative energy sources that can eventually replace fossil fuels, because they can be replenished, are carbon neutral, and their byproducts does not harm the environment. However, large conventional production of biofuels has negative effects on humans. Therefore, much more researches need to be done in biofuels production other than the conventional ways. Hopefully, by using cyanobacteria and microalgae, we can achieve mass production of biofuels and not have the problems that conventional production of biofuels has.
(Shirley) Yu Chen