Journey to find fuel of the future

In 1912, Erfinder Rudolf's grandfather had once claimed that vegetable oil could also be used to run machines like oil. However, at that time almost no one was interested in this idea.

Erfinder Rudolf
(Photo: spies-innovation )

Currently, there are about 800 million cars of all kinds in the world, consuming 10 million tons of oil a day, equal to half of the oil exploited daily. Today sustainable production and use of fuels is a tremendous task while the industry is turning into an important turning point.

In 2005, Germany produced 1.7 million tons of methylester (also known as biodiesel) from canola oil as a fuel for cars. Currently, the area of ​​canola oil in Germany is 1.2 million hectares, accounting for 10% of the country's arable land, and experts say it is difficult to expand the area of ​​canola oil. Germany can only produce at most 2 million tons of canola oil, while the annual demand is up to 130 million tons of mineral oil.

This shows that canola oil cannot make industrial society dependent on oil. Biodiesel can only be used to a certain extent for some newer diesel engines. This is the reason why Shell Group is more interested in developing second generation biofuels. To produce this fuel, people use both parts of the plant during agricultural production, sometimes these parts are waste such as straw, corn stalks, sunflower etc.

Alcohol is a biofuel that humans have been producing for thousands of years. In the 30s of the last century, people in the United States also intended to use alcohol as automobile fuel. However, those who praised the initiative could not prevail because then many large oil fields were discovered, especially in the Middle East. The abundant and cheap oil resources at the time made Western industrial nations more dependent on the import of this fuel.

Brazil is the only country that follows its own path and uses alcohol as fuel for cars. About 40% of the country's fuel needs are met by bioethanol, an alcohol form made from sugar cane.

Meanwhile in Europe and North America, ethanol is mainly prepared from agricultural crops such as grains. The US government also considers bioethanol a fuel of the future. The cost to improve the engine is low, the price of an alcohol-powered engine is only a few hundred euros higher than a gasoline engine. However, the disadvantage of this fuel is that the higher the ratio of ethanol, the greater the engine wear.

(Photo: daimlerchrysler)

A new type of technology, in the process of development, promises many prospects, that is ' sundiesel '. In the next year, a ' sundiesel ' production system will come into operation with a capacity of 15,000 tons of sundiesel per year. Sundiesel is completely non-toxic and does not contain aromatous substances.

So far people tend to use biogas to produce electricity. Biogas is very suitable for use in pneumatic vehicles. However, this has progressed very slowly so far because it has to make some changes in the automobile engine and must have the necessary infrastructure (gas station etc.).

According to many experts, only mixed fuels are promising for widespread application. Ethanol and sundiesel meet this requirement. So it was suggested that the future of drilling rigs would be replaced by plows.

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