Biofuels in Your Backyard

Currently, biomass energy makes up only a small amount of our energy used in the U.S. Notice that it can be used for heating, electricity, and transportation – biofuels refer to biomass used for transportation.

Ethanol and Biodiesel The two most common forms of biofuels are ethanol and biodiesel. Ethanol is made by fermenting sugars found in plants such as corn and switchgrass (left). It can be combined with regular unleaded gasoline and run in internal combustion engines of passenger cars. Biodiesel is made by adding alcohol to a feedstock like vegetable oil, waste vegetable oil (photo on right), or animal fat in a process called transesterification. It can be blended with petroleum diesel and run in diesel engines.

Colorado-Grown In addition to a number of ethanol plants in Colorado, some farmers on the Eastern plains have begun growing oilseed crops like canola (right) for use as a biofuel feedstock.

From Farm to Tank After the canola seeds are harvested, they are crushed for the oil. The vegetable oil can go through transesterification to make biodiesel (left). Some farmers even mix the straight vegetable oil (right) with regular unleaded gasoline in 3:1 ratio and run the blend in their diesel engines on-farm!

Valuable Leftovers Pressing oilseeds also produces a biproduct called press cake (left). The press cake of many crops like canola or sunflower can be fed to livestock in rations approved by USDA and often has a higher value to agricultural producers than the oil itself. www.statcan.gc.ca