Q1) What are biofuels?

Often when you think about the petrol or diesel that your car runs on, do you not wonder how it is different from vegetable oil? It looks the same! It feels the same! If you didn't know better you would probably think it tastes the same as well!

Q2) If vegetable oil is not different from petrol and diesel, then can it be used instead?

Yes! It is used infact. However, after effecting a slight modification. The modification is called transesterification and helps to reduce the viscosity of the oil. This oil is now rechristened Biodiesel.

Q3) Can I go outside and change my fuel in my diesel engined vehicle to biodiesel? Is there on engine modification needed? Will my engine not get damaged?

You can perfectly well do this. No engine modification is required. Biodiesel cleans cleaner in the engine, in the sense, it is more of a solvent, so actually removes dirt from your engines. Some people advise on replacing the filters after a few months of operation. Biodiesel gives you more efficiency than normal diesel.

However, many manufacturers don't allow biodiesel mixes of more than 20%. Some like Volkswagen allow upto 100%. Please keep this in mind.

Q4) Can I use biodiesel in my petrol engine?

No! Only in a diesel engine! However, you can mix ethanol with petrol. So, the comtemporary hope for substituting petrol is ethanol, and diesel is biodiesel. You can read about ethanol in other websites

Q5) Why would I want to use biodiesel anyway, apart from the fact that it gives a change of luch menu for my bored diesel engine? Why don't people just use plain old petroleum oil?

Petroleum extracted from the ground is a renewable resource. It is slowly but surely getting depleted. However, oil demand in the world is and will continue to grow very fast. Recently the price of crude oil has almost crossed $100 a barrel. Most of the oil is created in the Middle East which is politically a very unstable region. This means that if there is instability in the Middleeast, oil prices will swivel sharply, affecting the economic growth of the world.

Biodiesel adds on Carbon di-oxide to the atmosphere! When we burn biodiesel, CO2 is realeased, but this CO2 was also absorbed by the same plant to make this oil. Hence biodiesel will completely stop global warming and other climating changes!!

It also releases much lesser particulate matter, CO (due to incomplete combustion) and Sulphur oxides.