Friday, January 28, 2011

Challenge Number 5



As fossile fuels are pollutant and oil reserves are exhausting, biofuel production has increased in the last years. This week´s challenge will consist in researching about biofuels and their economic impact.

QUESTION 1

 What are biofuels? What are their types?

QUESTION 2

What are the most common liquid biofuels? What is the difference between them?


QUESTION 3

What is the relationship between the development of biofuels and the increase of the price of cereals? How can the development of biofuels affect food supply in developing countries?

The pictures included on this post and the links below will help you to complete your answers:


4 comments:

daniel pintado said...

1.-the biofuel is the mixture of carbohydrets that is uses like fuel to cars for example.
This alternative can reduce the use of fossile fuels like oil, coal...
*The biofuels user are bioethanol that is an alcohool made by fermenting the sugar componets of plant materials from sugar.
*the other is biodiesel. It's made from vegetable oils, animal fats or recycled greases.It is use to reduces the carbon monoxide.
2.- alcohols, oil vegetables, animal fats or recycled greases.
3.-Many of this biofuels are composed by cerealas. It's the law of supply and demand. There isn't a lot of cereals, and we need them.
Before in towns the cereals were to supply the demand of the citizens, now these cereals are sell to make biofuels


bye!

Unknown said...

Question 1:
The biofuels are a wide range of fuels which are in some way derived from biomass.
There are many types: bioethanol, biodiesel, biogas, biomethanol, pure vegetal oil, synthetic biofuels, bio-hydrogen...

Question 2:
The most common biofuels are the bioethanol and the biodiesel. Their differences are how are their components: the first has vegetables oils, animal fats, etc, and the second is made by alchohol made by fermenting the sugar components and more.

Question 3:
Their relationship is simple, if we use more biofuels which are made of components that we eat, the production of that components, like the cereals will be destinated to be sold to do biofuels and not to do the cereals that we have for breakfast.

Bye!!

Laura Meco said...

Question 1- Biofuels are any liquid, solid or gaseous fuels produced from organic matter. The term covers solid biomass, liquid fuels and various biogases.
Question 2- The main liquid fuels are petroleum: gasoline, diesel, kerosene; non-petroleum fuels, biodiesel, alcohols: methanol, ethanol and butanol; and hydrogen. The difference is present in their components; some are made with specific components and others with other components.
Question 3-The reason why the price of cereals increased was because the demand was increasing also, because many of the biofuels are produced with cereals or with vegetable oil. It affects negatively in the development of poor countries. As the demand of cereals increase, its price also increases and in developing countries people buy a lot of cereals.
Aid organizations which help those people would have to pay a big amount of money to fulfill the necessity of all of them.

Good luck for everybody!

Paqui Pérez Fons said...

As the three of you have written, biofuels are fuels made with biomass (any matter derived from animals or plants): they can be unprocessed primary biofuels, such as fuelwood, charcoal, animal excrements processed secondary biofuels, such as liquid biofuels.

The most important liquid biofuels are ethanol and biodiesel. The difference between them is that ethanol is produced through fermentation and distillation of any raw material containing important amounts of sugar (sugarcane or sugar beet) or starch (corn, wheat or cassava). Biodiesel is produced by combining vegetable oil or animal fat with alcohol. It can be produced from rapeseed, soybean, palm, coconut oil, sunflower…

With respect to question 3, the development of biofuels has increased the price of cereals and this can be harmful for the population of the developing countries, whose nutrition depends basically on cereals. Many farmers of the developing countries are selling their crops to multinational companies, producing shortage of cereals and an increase of the price of products. Speculators have also an important role in this increase. Biofuels are not the only reason for the increase of the price of cereals, but they have contributed to escalation in prices.

The three of you have answered correctly to some questions, but none of you has answered correctly the three questions.

Question 1: the best answer is the one of Laura.
Question 2: The best answer is Javi´s
Question 3: The best answers are the ones of Laura and Dani.

So this week´s winner is Laura. Congratulations!

Good night.