Despite a rapid worldwide expansion of the biofuel industry, there is a lack of consensus within the scientific community about the potential of biofuels to reduce reliance on petroleum and decrease greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Although life cycle assessment provides a means to quantify these potential benefits and environmental impacts, existing methods limit direct comparison within and be...

Many studies have compared corn-based ethanol to cellulosic ethanol on a per unit basis and have generally concluded that cellulosic ethanol will result in fewer environmental consequences, including nitrate (NO3(-)) output. This study takes a system-wide approach in considering the NO3(-) output and the relative areal extent of hypoxia in the Northern Gulf of Mexico (NGOM) due to the introduct...

Ethanol is a biofuel used worldwide. However, the presence of excessive water either during the distillation process or by fraudulent adulteration is a major concern in the use of ethanol fuel. High water levels may cause engine malfunction, in addition to being considered illegal. Here, we describe the development of a simple, fast and accurate platform based on nanostructured sensors to evalu...

Depletion of petroleum derived fuel and environmental concern has promoted to look over the biofuel as an alternative fuel sources. But a complete substitution of petroleum derived fuels by biofuel is impossible from the production capacity and engine compatibility point of view. Yet, marginal replacement of diesel by biofuel can prolong the depletion of petroleum resources and abate the radica...

Due to the increasing concerns about limited fossil resources and environmental problems, there has been much interest in developing biofuels from renewable biomass. Ethanol is currently used as a major biofuel, as it can be easily produced by existing fermentation technology, but it is not the best biofuel due to its low energy density, high vapor pressure, hygroscopy, and incompatibility with...

Ethanol biofuel could play an important role in reducing petroleum consumption by enabling a substantial increase in the fuel efficiency of gasoline engine vehicles. This ethanol boosted engine concept uses a small amount ethanol to increase the efficiency of use of a much larger amount of gasoline by approximately 30%. Gasoline consumption and the corresponding CO2 emissions would thereby be r...

The temperature of the coolant is known to have significant influence on engine performance and emissions. Whereas existing literature describes the effects of coolant temperature in engines using fossil derived fuels, very few studies have investigated these effects when biofuel is used. In this study, Jatropha oil was blended separately with ethanol and butanol. It was found that the 80% jatr...

Aquaporin (Aqp) embedded membranes have become a topic of recent research due to the superior selectivity of Aqp to water and its acceptable flux. Most researchers have utilized Aqp membranes for water purification purposes such as reverse and forward osmosis desalination of sea and brackish water and wastewater treatment. This paper investigated the permeation of aqueous ethanol across commerc...

Emergy synthesis is used as a tool for a critical analysis of biofuels promoted by the Swedish energy policies. We evaluate the production process of three different biofuels in Sweden: Ethanol from wheat (Transformity: 9.19E+04 seJ/J, Renewability: 12% Emergy Yield Ratio: 1.15); methanol from willow (second generation biofuel) (Transformity: 6.06E+04 seJ/J, Renewability: 10% Emergy Yield Ratio...

Two types of grape pomace were ensiled with eight strains of lactic acid bacteria (LAB). Both fresh grape pomace (FrGP) and fermented grape pomace (FeGP) were preserved through alcoholic fermentation but not malolactic conversion. Water leaching prior to storage was used to reduce water-soluble carbohydrates and ethanol from FrGP and FeGP, respectively, to increase malolactic conversion. Leache...