Biofuels are forms of petrol and diesel that are made from crops, trees or other plants such as algae, or from waste materials. Most cars, lorries and farm machinery produced nowadays can run on fossil fuels blended with small amounts of biofuel. Flexible fuel vehicles (FFVs), which can use any combination of biofuel and petrol, are available in some countries.
There has been a great deal of experimentation and many ideas about how animal and plant products could be used to generate different forms of energy – for example, to produce electricity. However, the term biofuels is generally used to refer to two types of combustible fuel used to run vehicles: bioethanol and biodiesel.
Bioethanol, a form of alcohol, is an alternative to petrol which can be made from a wide range of plants, including sugars, like sugar beets and sugarcane, grains such as maize, wheat and rice, cellulose, like grass or wood, and waste products, such as crop waste or municipal waste.
Biodiesel is an alternative to diesel which can be made from vegetable oils, such as rapeseed, oil palm and soya bean, and animal fats, including waste cooking oil. Indeed, when Rudolf Diesel exhibited the engine he invented at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900, it ran on peanut oil.
Skip Channel4 main Navigation
