Exploitation of fossil fuels such as lignite, brown coal, crude oil and natural gas comes from the oxidation of carbon stored over millions of years in the Earth’s crust; the combustible energy when released in the atmosphere emits carbon dioxide (CO2). Increased concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere causes global warming, because it is a greenhouse gas. Fossil fuels are limited and concentrat...

According to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) guidelines, when calculating CO2 emissions, CO2 emissions from biomass should be excluded from the total amount of CO2 emissions and should be separately reported due to their “carbon neutrality”. Sewage sludge is one of the representative biomass fuels. It is mixed with fossil fuels to achieve greenhouse gas reduction or is used...

We assessed the water requirements of ethanol from corn grain and crop residue. Estimates are explicit in terms of sources-green (GW) and blue (BW) water, consumptive and nonconsumptive requirements across the lifecycle, including evapotranspiration, application and conveyance losses, biorefinery uses, and water use of energy inputs, and displaced requirements or credits due to coproducts. Etha...

Depletion of fossil fuels and environmental pollution has led researchers to anticipate the need to develop bio-fuels. Alcohols are an important category of bio-fuels. Methanol can be produced from coal, biomass or even natural gas with acceptable energy cost. Also, gasification of biomass can lead to methanol, mixed alcohols, and Fischer–Tropsch liquids (Chum and Overend, 2001). Ethanol is pro...

global air pollution is a serious threat caused by excessive use of fossil fuels for transportation. despite the fact that diesel fuel is a big environmental pollutant as it contains different hydrocarbons, sulphur and crude oil residues, it is yet regarded as a highly critical fuel due to its wide applications. nowadays, biodiesel as a renewable additive is blended with diesel fuel to achieve ...

Energy plays a significant role in today's developing societies. The role of energy demands to make decisions and policy with regard to its production, distribution, and supply. The vital importance of energy, especially fossil fuels, is a factor affecting agricultural production. This factor has a great influence on the production of agricultural products in Iran. The forecast of the con...

Combustion of fossil fuels has been the backbone of the power generation, manufacturing and transportation industries in the twentieth century. Although the mix of fuels has changed, at the close of the century we find that combustion systems have not changed overmuch. Operational caused by inorganic elements in fossil fuels (corrosion, slagging, and fouling) continue to present problems in com...

Terrestrial transport biofuels differ in their ability to replace fossil fuels. When both the conversion of solar energy into biomass and the life cycle inputs of fossil fuels are considered, ethanol from sugarcane and biodiesel from palm oil do relatively well, if compared with ethanol from corn, sugar beet or wheat and biodiesel from rapeseed. When terrestrial biofuels are to replace mineral ...