Rapid industrialization and growth in population in urban regions augment the pollution levels from transportation sectors, especially from diesel fleets. A wide array of research activities were carried out to satisfy the energy needs as well as reduce the emission levels, which poses a big challenge to the research community. In this situation, biomass-derived fuels provide a ray of hope to the research community to address the emission problem by adapting closed carbon cycle at low cost. This chapter gives an overview to the readers about the present energy scenario, biomass-based fuel, upgradation techniques for biomass fuel, and engine adaptability of biomass-based fuels. This chapter provides a clear glimpse of biomass energy, one of the potential energy resources in the near future.
TopIntroduction
In current scenario, more importance has been given towards the progress of petroleum, coal, and gas-based plants for utilizing the economically feasible feedstock. These feed stocks are generally used for producing various yields like fuel, chemicals, fiber, plastics, pesticides, fertilizers, lubricants, coke, etc. for satisfying the requirements (Bender, 2000; M. F. Demirbas, 2006). These resources are the crucial fuels to produce power and electricity used for engineering as well as domestic applications. Exponential growth of industrialization at worldwide is the most important reason for significant utilization of fossil fuels. However, these fossil resources are considered as non-sustainable resource and produce environmental pollutants or emissions (Nanda, Rana, Sarangi, Dalai, & Kozinski, 2018).
Petroleum based fuels plays a vital role in transportation part. Transport accounts for around 64% fuel utilization, 27% of energy, and 23% of Carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions. Burning of fossil fuel in transportation sector is the major reason for increasing the pollution level. CO2 is one of the most dangerous greenhouse emission from transport sector (Boden, Marland, & Andres, 2017). CO2 emission from fuel combustion was shown in Figure 1(IEA, 2017). Due to increase in greenhouse gases (GHG), there is a tremendous increase in earth’s temperature. This brought upon a change in climatic pattern and environment. 8% of 25,000 species vanished due to these climatic changes. Half the species of plants and animals found on the face of earth are at a risk of extinction. Climatic changes have also affected the frequency, intensity and duration of natural disaster such as hurricane, tornado, tsunami etc. On the other hand, polar ice caps are melting at an alarming rate and polar animals are soon to become endangered species.
Figure 1. World CO2 emissions from fuel combustion from 1971 to 2015 by region (IEA, 2017)
Figure 2 demonstrates the global production of petroleum and other fuels. The destruction of fossil fuels has a major contribution to raise the CO2 level as well as GHG emissions. An unpleasant effect of GHG emission on environment along with decaying petroleum reservations was recognized. Hence, an exploration for environment friendly and sustainable resources of energy for industrial and domestic purposes was initiated in recent years (Sakthivel, Ramesh, Purnachandran, & Shameer, 2018). Accordingly, there is an enhanced interest in extraction and utilization of fuel from plants/organic wastes. As compared to raw diesel, hybrid diesel decreases GHG emissions approximately 24% (Chrysikou, Dagonikou, Dimitriadis, & Bezergianni, 2019). The bio-fuels extracted from renewable and biomaterials has the ability to diminish GHG emissions as well as enhance the overall energy efficiency of the existing fuel systems, and used for different applications (Nanda, Azargohar, Dalai, & Kozinski, 2015). An extensive focus on bio-fuel extraction may perhaps substitute the exploit of petroleum and other fossil fuels in future.
The second generation bio-fuels like bio-alcohols, vegetable oil, biodiesel, bio-DMF, bio-hydrogen, bio-Fischer-Tropsch diesel were produced from the crops not used for food, wheat, corn and similar vegetation, wood, waste through fermentation, esterification, gasification, pyrolysis, thermo-chemical processes (A. Demirbas, 2011; Dinesh, Tamilvanan, Vaishnavi, Gopinath, & Mohan, 2019). Thermo-chemical route and biochemical route are essential methods to produce the bio-fuels from biomass. Among these, Pyrolysis process paying more attention owing to its characteristics like simple process and requires minimum operating pressure. This process has higher efficiency with minimal waste. The plastic waste was converted into energy through pyrolysis process and pyrolysis oil have elevated calorific value which can be utilized as an alternative fuel (Sharuddin, Abnisa, Daud, & Aroua, 2018).
Figure 2. Production of petroleum and other fuels (EIA, 2015)