Whether you've read about it in the August issue of National Geographic, heard about George W. Bush's recent visit to a biodiesel plant in Virgina, you must know that renewable fuels are soon to be more than just a nice idea. Renewable sources of fuel are not hard to find, and we'd like to help you in your search.
Biofuels offer the following benefits:
Renewable - It's only limited by the amount of oilseed crops that can be grown
Environmentally Friendly - Several sources have shown that most biofuels release fewer "greenhouse gases" into the air.
Supports local agriculture - While fossil fuels come from decomposed dinosaurs, biofuels are made from soybeans, rapeseed (canola oil), or even waste vegetable oil from local restaurants.
1/23/06 A shift in focus...
Ok, I'm going to give up trying to keep a running log of what we're doing on this page. I'm just not keeping up on the updates (darn that day job!).
However, I think a renewed effort to put new research materials and information could be a very good thing for this site. WFU Biofuels is a little bit behind some other organizations in researching biodiesel production, but we have some motivated, hard-working people in our group, so we still have the potential to do some good work on the subject.
The current "monkey on our back" is oil feedstocks. For this, we are looking into the existing research on microalgae as a producer of oil. Check out the new list of links below on oil production from algae.