ביו-דלק - להניע מכוניות בדלק ממקורות מתחדשים ולהגן על הסביבה

This article is part of a series of articles on dealing with global warming through carbon adsorption out of the atmosphere. The claim is that sequestering carbon weakens the greenhouse effect by reducing its amount Greenhouse gases.

Of all the methods for draining carbon from the atmosphere discussed in the previous articles, the source with the greatest potential in preventing greenhouse gas emissions is precisely the use of plants as a substitute for fossil fuel (fuel created from fossils - for example oil, coal and natural gas).

When living plants (eg sugarcane in Brazil or corn in the United States) are used as a source of methanol or other types of fuel that replace fossil fuels (oil, gas or coal), the carbon remains in a closed loop. Although it is the burning of plants (or their products) that emits CO2 into the atmosphere, this amount comes as a substitute for fossil fuel and is constantly renewed.

Let's assume for the purpose of the discussion that a 10 size field of sugar cane supplies 10 cars on an ongoing basis, even though CO2 is constantly being released into the atmosphere through the process of burning the fuel, at the same time the field needs a corresponding amount of CO2 for the growth of the plants. The result is a closed circle where the amount net of carbon emitted into the atmosphere is marginal. On the other hand, if the same 10 cars themselves continued to run on fossil fuel (usually octane at one rate or another), then there would be no factor balancing the carbon emissions and it would be necessary to pump the necessary carbon from the ground. Estimates are that today around 30-50 million barrels are pumped around the world per day, depending on the season and fuel prices. On the other hand, vegetable fuel is used in a relatively limited way in the Western world, for example in the USA the annual consumption of vegetable fuel is 60 million tons (that is, the consumption of fossil fuel for seven days is equal to the consumption of vegetable fuel for an entire year) from which 37,000,000 kwh are produced.

It is important to emphasize that not all renewable fuel sources really contribute to the environment and prevent the emission of carbon dioxide. There are parts of Europe and North America, where the physical conditions (soil and weather, for example) require such a large investment in growing the plants to deposit the fuel that an almost equal amount of oil is required to produce the apparently 'vegetable' fuel.
Also, large areas that were previously used for growing food are being converted to growing plants for fuel production, food prices are rising. As a result, in recent years we have seen that parts of Africa and South Asia have reached the brink of starvation due to rising corn and wheat prices.

Sources: US DOE, https://www.eren.doe.gov/biopower/basics/index.htm

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