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 Biofuels -- salvation or distraction?
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 Presentation
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Between cost of fuel, and impacts on climate from our global use of fossil fuels, people are looking for alternatives. One way around both problems might be in biologically-based fuels -- biofuels.
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But there's more than a little controversy surrounding biofuels. Not as easy to produce in practice as in theory, some biofuels don't really reduce CO2 emissions to any appreciable extent, often are some nasty side-effects to production & use.
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 What are they?
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Theory vs. practice
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What's bad about biofuels?
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Problems fall into a couple of categories
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Producing the fuel
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Handling the fuel
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Byproducts of production
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Political complications
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Secondary effects (unanticipated consequences)
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I'll split things into two clumps -- the fuel itself, and the source of it
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Chemistry of the fuel
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Alcohols (ethanol, methanol, butanol)
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Ethanol
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Methanol (methyl alcohol, wood alcohol)
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Butanol
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Diesel
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Hydrogen
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Source of the fuel
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Grains
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Tropical oil crops -- palm, nuts, etc.
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Sugarcane
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"Waste" cooking oil
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Cellulose
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Lignin
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Algae
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Current state of development
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First generation biofuels -- available, but have their problems
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Second generation biofuels (4 - 5 years away)
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Third generation biofuels
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Fourth generation biofuels
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Wrapup
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All biofuels are natural, but "natural" isn't the same as "environmentally friendly."
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One of the biggest problems with new bio-derived fuels -- "chicken and egg" dilemma, no infrastructure for new fuels until vehicles using them are available, but people won't buy vehicles until they can fuel them. Simplest way around this: create new / compatible versions of old fuels.
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Most of the exciting future work is still under wraps -- highly proprietary until somebody comes up with a truly commercializable solution
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Long range solution will likely involve engineered bacteria / enzymes being used to create new gasoline-like fuels. A number of companies have done this in a lab setting; big challenge is scaling this up to something that works reliably on a commercial scale.
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In the meantime, there's always algae -- lots of research on algae-based fuels was killed off by low oil prices ($20 / barrel) back in the 1990's, but getting restarted now.
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Sources and background material
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Biodiesel
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Ethanol
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Methanol
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Hydrogen
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Butanol
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Impacts
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Biofuel from brownfields
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Biofuel from algae
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Biofuel from trash
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Biofuel from trees, other plants
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