The use of bio-fuels that we grow could replace fossil fuels global in a heartbeat, but there is one critical hurdle for us to overcome before that could be a reality.
Has the world been too brash in the quest to replace the good old internal Combustion Engine (ICE)? Let’s face it, the original diesel engines ran on bio fuel from peanuts, and that was back in 1893 and the original petrol engines ran on a bio-ethyl.
Bio-fuel chemistry has been around a long time then and it does have the potential to be a viable alternative.
Sure Electric Vehicles (EVs) do seem to tick the boxes when it comes to solving global warming, unless you read some of the articles that we have written at Automology, but it does raise the question of whether a wholesale change of technology is better than a tweak to current tried and tested methodology.
Evan though only about 3% of all CO2 comes from human activity, experts are telling us that the only way to save the world is to switch to a sustainable, carbon neutral format.
I will argue, and have done so repeatedly, that EVs are no where as carbon neutral as we are led to believe. But what if the alternative is a drop in fully synthetic alternative, a fuel that has no fossil fuel but can be delivered with the existing infrastructure into cars that we already own and love?
This would have to be done without the need to sacrifice agricultural land to growing food and thus impacting food security but if it could be achieved then atmospheric CO2 from human transportation could be eliminated literally overnight.
The Volkswagen Group, and in particular Porsche, have been toying with the idea for some time and already have a functioning Bio-fuel factory and now Mazda have stuck their stick in the sand and taking an active interest.
Just like their German partners in the e-fuel alliance they are taking to the race track to help develop and of course promote the use of synthetic fuels. Mazda have opted for a 1.5 litre Skyactiv diesel engine, and not petrol like Porsche.
The car runs on a fuel called Susteo which is produced by a company called Euglena from used cooking oil (about 90%) and extracts from a type of Algae called euglena making up the remaining 10%.
Just because the oil may have come out of a McDonalds deep fat fryer it does not mean that race tracks of the future will smell like a burger-shop. The oil is a plentiful and cheap by-product of the food industry that is easy to convert into clean burning fuel.
And it is carbon neutral as the algae used grows by converting atmospheric CO2 into energy bearing oil. The plan of the company is to eventually scale up the algae growing to account for 100% of the fuel and the best thing is, it can be grown on land unsuitable for agriculture.
Replacing the current hydrocarbon usage with bio-fuels is going to take a lot of work to scale up right? No, you’re wrong. Currently the world consumes some 1.3 gallons of fuel a day but consider this: We consume some 140 billion gallons of vegetable oils annually.
Already more than 1.3 billion gallons of Used Cooking Oil is recycled per year. So perhaps this is not such a far-fetched idea. But first we have to recognise that EVs are probably not the answer to future transportation requirements.
