Biodiesel may be friendly to the environment more than Gasohol
Latest research has concluded that in the battle of producing fuels for vehicle that are friendly to the environment, Biodiesel seem to get the victory over ethanol. Anyway both fuels could not reduce much of the consumption of petroleum.

Gasoholis the benzene mixing or blending with ethanol in order to replace MTBE (Methyl tert-butyl ether) which is the compound that help to increase the octane of the oil. There is a research finding that MTBE may be toxic to the underground water, so there is a move to disuse MTBE. At present many countries have ban the use of MTBE including some state of USA.

At this moment, Thailand plan to ban the use of MTBE in the benzene 95 by using gasohol 95 instead and the project is scheduled to be completed by 2007 follow up by the use of gasohol 91 instead of benzene 91 in 2008.

The main raw materials in Thailand used in production of ethanol are molasses and cassava but in USA ethanol is produced from corn.

Biodiesel is ordinary diesel oil mixed or blended with the oil extracted from plant. In Thailand the favorite plants are oil palm and physic nut but in the USA biodiesel is produced from soy bean.

Both ethanol and biodiesel are the choice of energy that is friendly to the environment. It is believed that the use of both energy instead of regular oil will reduce the green house gas effect because CO2 will be absorbed by the biomass energy production process.

However, the production of energy from sugar cane and soy bean will also require the use of regular oil because during planting and harvesting will need the agricultural machinery, also in the production of insecticide and fertilizer as well as production of biodiesel and ethanol. Opposite opinion group claims that using both biodiesel and gasohol may not reduce the release of green house gas when consider the whole process.

To get the conclusion is this matter, Dr. David Tillman an ecologist from Minnesota university USA and Coworkers have calculated the total environmental cost in order to produce both biofuel and found that ethanol produced from corn will help reduce the release of green house gas or CO2 by only 12% less than regular benzene oil while the biodiesel from soy bean can reduce the green house gas by 41% because it require no distillation which need more energy. Also it was less fertilizer and insecticide in the soy bean planting compare to corn.

From the calculation if we use the total corn and soy bean oil from energy replacement, it could compensate not more than 5% of the need of total fuel or oil consumption in the United States but may cause the problem of food shortage.

David Tillman said that both plants take small part in producing energy because plants which are used as food are not suitable as energy source in the long term and suggest that we should produce ethanol from cellulose which is important part of non-food plant such as grass or other trees and this will help reduce much of the green house effect gas.

Presently the U.S. has a joint project with many research institutes called “Joint Genome Institute” to decode the genetic codes of both plants to be used from ethanol production; they are switch grass and cassava. This will help to reduce the environmental cost from energy production.

This kind of research seem to benefit Thailand too because the raw material in production of ethanol and biodiesel of Thailand are different than those of U.S.  We can see whether the tendency of the environmental cost resulting from production of both ethanol and biodiesel are worth or not.

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