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Plant Oils
In the content of I/GCSE Chemistry,
- Vegetable oils can be used to produce fuels
- Vegetable oils produce a lot of energy so it is suitable
- Biodiesel is a particularly useful fuel made from vegetable oils
- It has similar properties to ordinary fuel; it burns the same way so you can use it to fuel a diesel engine
- Most diesel engines can burn 100% biodiesel but it's usually mixed with ordinary diesel
- Engines burning biodiesel produces 90% as much power as engines burning ordinary diesel
Biodiesel is renewable
- It comes from plant crops which can be planted and harvested every year
- You can always keep making biodiesel
- Ordinary diesel is made by the distillation of crude oil
- Crude oil was formed millions of years ago, it'll take millions of years to make more
- Once it runs out, that's it
Biodiesel releases less pollution
- When engines burn biodiesel they produce much less sulphur dioxide pollution than when engines burn ordinary diesel or petrol
- Burning biodiesel releases less particulates (little pieces of solid crud that you get in smoke and car exhausts)
- It's biodegradable and less toxic
- Biodiesel does release the same amount of carbon dioxide as normal diesel
- BUT because biodiesel comes from plants, the plants will have taken in the same amount of carbon dioxide as given out when it's burned
The bad side of biodiesel
In the content of I/GCSE Chemistry,
- We can't make enough biodiesel to replace diesel
- There aren't enough vegetable crops
- Biodiesel can also be made from used vegetable oils but there isn't enough of that either
- Because of this biodiesel is expensive, meaning most people won't want to use it until it's cheaper
- Also some people disagree with the use of biofuels because we are using the land needed to grow crops for food to grow crops for fuel instead
- Although saying this, biodiesels don't need any modifications making to a car engine unlike biogas and electricity
Written by Bryant Wong (Chemistry)