Biofuels for Road Transport: A Seed to Wheel Perspective [Paperback]

Biofuels for Road Transport: A Seed to Wheel Perspective provides a review of the history, the current status and perspectives for biofuels used in road transport, across the full seed-to-wheel life cycle of these fuels. Successive chapters cover the history of biofuels; the first- and second-generation liquid fuels and biofuels for powering electric vehicles; fossil fuel replacement, land requirement, greenhouse gas balances and environmental burdens of ethanol, esters derived from fatty acids (biodiesel), Fischer-Tropsch diesel and HTU diesel; competing technologies (fossil fuels, increases in energy-efficiency and photovoltaic power) and how they compare to biofuels; and the perspectives for biofuels. Cost, availability, technological development, competition with biomass for food and for soil organic carbon and environmental perspectives are also discussed.

Transport Biofuels: Their Characteristics, Production and Costs.- Energy Balance: Cumulative Fossil Fuel Demand and Solar Energy Conversion Efficiency of Transport Biofuels.- Non-energy Natural Resource Demand.- Climate Effects and Non-greenhouse Gas Emissions Associated with Transport Biofuel Life Cycles.- The Impact of Expanded Biofuel Production on Living Nature.- Frequently Asked Questions in the Transport Biofuel Debate.

This book addresses critical issues related to a biofuel-driven transportation network. Reijnders (biodiversity and ecosystem dynamics, Univ. of Amsterdam, Netherlands) and Huijbregts (environmental science, Radboud Univ. Nijmegen, Netherlands) have done a thorough job explaining the varieties of biofuels (e.g., ethanol, lipid-based, microalgae), including their characteristics and production... This well-researched work, with an extensive bibliography, will be of interest to all levels of readers and should be on every fuel professional's bookshelf... Highly recommended.

Choice (August 2009) (Reviewer: J. Tavakoli, LlÃi