Biofuel is defined as solid, liquid, or gas fuel derived from recently dead biological material. The difference between our petroleum and biofuel is that petroleum is derived from long dead biological material. Sources of biofuel include plants with high contents of sugar and starch or plants with high vegetable oil such as sugarcane and oil palm.
Sime Darby Malaysia has come up with a new technology that uses oil palm as a source of biofuel to power our vehicles. This will be a huge discovery as we are soon having shortage of petroleum and our dependency on petroleum as our source of energy generation is too high. Using biofuel for energy generation will decrease our dependency on petroleum as our major energy generation for transportation. With the increase of the price of petroleum, many countries have come up with different methods to curb this problem. Biofuel will be the answer to that in Malaysia.
Secondly, biofuel is a renewable energy as it can be grown to produce plants and then later used for energy generation. Currently, we are using petroleum which is said to be depleted in about 40-50 years time. Biofuel if used as a diversified energy resource will be able to extend our petroleum resource in Malaysia.
Biofuel is a very safe and natural energy resource. It emits omitable carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. So, it does not add any additional damage to our atmosphere due to greenhouse effect. This is due to the process being used to generate power using biofuel. Plus, biofuel is mainly made out from plants and plants will reduce our carbon dioxide level in our atmosphere through photosynthesis. So, biofuel will be a very useful source of energy in Malaysia.
Biofuel is also cheap and reliable on the road if used for transportation. This is because biofuel is not as explosive and the technology that has been developed is made for safety on the road. Unless a major accident happens, the biofuel running engine will not cause any big damage to road...