For the most part of the auto industry, gasoline has been used to power vehicles. Recently though, the threat of global warming and the impending shortage of fossil fuel has forced car manufacturers and other industries to look for substitutes to gasoline.
Diesel is a good alternative to gasoline since it is much cheaper, but the use of diesel also produces huge amounts of greenhouse gases even with the use of particulate filters and other systems which have been created especially so as to limit the emission of greenhouse gases.
For diesel engined vehicles, another form of fuel is slowly becoming more and more practical to use, and this is biodiesel. Biodiesel is a processed fuel from biological sources such as vegetable oils. This means that it comes from a renewable source of energy.
Technically, biodiesel can be used on any diesel engined vehicles. In the United States, there are already a host of vehicles which can run on biodiesel. These vehicles are the Chevrolet Express, the Dodge Ram and Sprinter, the Ford E-Series and the F-Series Super Duty, the GMC Savana, Sierra 2500 HD, Silverado 2500 HD, the Jeep Grand Cherokee, and the Volkswagen Touareg TDI.
Four Mercedes-Benz models which are capable of running on biodiesel are also available in the United States. These are the Mercedes-Benz E320 BLUETEC, R320 CDI, ML320 CDI, and the GL320 CDI. All these vehicles are available for all American car buyers who want to save on fuel consumption and at the same time contribute to the protection of the environment. While these vehicles are not originally equipped with performance enhancing aftermarket parts like Mitsubishi cold air intake systems, they can provide good fuel economy and high performance to boot.
Biodiesel is seen as one of the most promising alternative fuels under development. Using biodiesel instead of petroleum diesel reduces the amount of carbon monoxide (CO) emission by as much as 50 percent. Another greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, is also reduced by as much as 78 percent. The amount of carbon produced by burning biodiesel is countered by the amount of carbon of plants where the fuel came and these actually absorb the carbon from the atmosphere. It also contains less sulfur than petroleum diesel which means that vehicles running on biodiesel contribute less to the formation of acid rain compared to vehicles running on petroleum diesel.
Petroleum diesel when burned produces sulfur dioxide (SO2) which reacts with oxygen and water in the atmosphere to produce sulfuric acid, a component of acid rain.
Recently though, environmentalists became concerned on the negative impact of biodiesel on the environment. Since biodiesel is produced from biological sources, a huge area of rainforests is flattened to grow plants which are essential in producing the alternative fuel. The result of this is the increase in the risk of extinction of rare flora and fauna. In the Philippines and Indonesia, huge tracts of tropical forest areas have been sacrificed to increase biodiesel production.
In order for this issue to be resolved, the alternative fuel industry needs to come up with ways to produce biodiesel without sacrificing the natural landscape.
Given her background on cars as an auto insurance director, Lauren Woods finds the world of cars to be constantly changing.
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