The Historical Biodiesel Fuel Prices and Its Effects
Biodiesel has come a long way since its conception in the early 1800s. Before, the known future is just biofuel and there were a lot of people skeptical about it. Now, more and more countries are building up plants to process animal and plant oils into biodiesel. Several countries are also using biodiesel in their diesel blends and this is commonly marketed under the name Premium Diesel. These countries have undergone several historical biodiesel fuel prices.
Biodiesel fuel is a product of mixing plant and animal oils with ethanol or glycerol. It is commonly referred to as FAME—an abbreviation of fatty acid methyl. The process is called transesterification. This is not a complex process since it can be done at home. However, for a large volume of biodiesel fuel, it has to be processed in a plant. This type of fuel can be recycled. As such, its development is highly prioritized so diesel can be produced at lower costs affecting historical biodiesel fuel prices.
Now commonly used in Europe and Asia, historical biodiesel fuel prices dictate that this is very much dependent on the availability of feedstock. This is because biodiesel is made of animal and plant fats. Since people cannot just get fat from animals, it is a challenge where to get the oil from plants. As a result, it has been said that rainforests are being depleted just to give way to farmlands that specifically product plants that are good sources of biodiesel feedstock such as soy.
The primary feedstock of this type of fuel in the United States is soybean. It is common knowledge that the United States has historical biodiesel fuel prices. In Europe, it is rapeseed oil. It was observed that for one gallon of biodiesel oil or fuel produced, we are saving the same one gallon of fuel oil that comes from petroleum.
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Like ethanol, biodiesel is another form of biofuel, except that it is made up of biomass (the matter collected from plant and animal sources that can be converted into energy. Advocates tout biodiesel as a renewable resource that can generally be used in existing oil heating systems and diesel engines without modification. This is an advantage over other alternative fuels, which can be expensive to use initially due to high cost of equipment modifications or new purchases.
In the long run, however, biodiesel is more expensive than petroleum because the cost of turning raw materials into burnable, energy-producing form is higher than its overall return. Moreover, because biodiesel is typically blended with petroleum diesel, it therefore shares diesel’s harmful emissions and remains heavily dependent on foreign petroleum imports. What’s more, large-scale production of biodiesel requires a considerable amount of cropland, which could have adverse affects on the global food supply as the price of other goods and products become susceptible to a backlash effect.
Fortunately, there is Natural Gas lying around as the only alternative source of energy with the present capability to overcome these hurdles while bringing us closer to sustainable energy independence. Unlike biodiesel, Natural Gas is clean burning with no nitrogen oxide emissions and is suitable at any temperature with no drivability problems due to it solidifying during a severe winter storm, for instance.
Without a doubt, the better alternative that offers cleaner fuel at a reasonable price, and with a wider distribution infrastructure currently in place is Compressed Natural Gas or (CNG.)