Renewable Biofuels and Their By-Products for Automotive Applications

Abstract

The automotive sector is the biggest consumer of fossil based fuels and hence it is one of the largest producer of greenhouse gasses around the world. Concern over climate change has led the automotive manufactures to switch over alternate fuels, which is easily & cheaply available and reduce emissions. Biofuels have all these merits of alternate fuels and can be easily blended with petroleum products. Various researches have confirmed the similarity of physical and chemical characteristic of the biofuels with petroleum products used in the automotive sector. Lots of experiments have been conducted over the past years to evaluate the performance of biofuel, in vehicles, in comparison to petroleum products and the results are very much similar to what is obtained from petroleum products with lesser emissions. Apart from technological aspect, the question over economic aspect is also much important and need to be evaluated. In order to establish the biofuels and its bi-product as a alternate fuel for automotive sector the pricing must be competitive with that of petroleum products. Hence, this article evaluates the economical aspect of an important biofuel called “Mahua” by using life cycle costing analysis. It has been analyzed that the total cost of production of biodiesel has been recovered in 10 years from bi-products like seed cake and glycerol and hence production of biodiesel is almost free. The per liter cost of biodiesel has reached 40.24 Rs./liter mark at the end of the 10th year. © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved