A few years ago, talking about ecological fuels was almost something of a fantasy. But in recent times significant scientific advances have been made in the matter, which allowed not only to generate headlines in the news, but also to become reality and already be used in motorsports. The World Rally Championship is an example of this, with Rally1 category vehicles running entirely on biofuel.
What is biofuel?
As its name implies, it is a type of fuel created from fresh organic material, unlike traditional fuel that is refined from petroleum. Although it seems like a novelty, there are already some types of biofuels that have been around for a long time, such as ethanol which is obtained from the processing of sugar cane and also corn.
But in the case of the company P1Fuels, its biofuel is produced with a combination of biomass and hydrogen. Biomass is based on crops, and when fully processed, the result is a fuel that works like gasoline.
If you’re wondering, yes, this also means that it burns and releases carbon emissions like gasoline, but the carbon released is already part of the current carbon cycle, absorbed over months as crops grow. This is very different from what fossil fuels do, which have held carbon for millions of years and released it into the atmosphere when burned. Therefore, we could say that biofuel is technically a carbon neutral solution, which does not need to depend on a finite source of oil or invasive and polluting extraction methods. Moreover, a good part of the biomass is obtained with the organic material left over from the crops, processed with hydrogen.
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Can biofuel be used in a common vehicle?
Precisely P1 Fuels, is the company that supplies biofuel to the World Rally Championship. That’s why, the owner of this Ferrari 360 with a 3.6L V8 engine, wanted to test how well this new fuel worked in the supercar and made a video with the experiment. The result? No problem, there were no changes in performance compared to the usual gasoline.
Although this fuel is designed for motorsports, it was shown that a vehicle designed to use fossil fuel can also use biofuel and do so without problems. This opens the doors for us to have some hope of a future where not everything that moves is exclusively electric.even perhaps this type of fuel is the one that gives life to classic vehicles in the future.
The technology is available, the only thing missing is the political and collective decision to face the necessary energy transition to save the planet. While the world is looking towards electric mobility, the lithium needed for the batteries does not come out of the plants, and it is also a non-renewable resource with complex and polluting extraction. Perhaps the answer lies in biofuel, or at least it is what is useful to countries with emerging economies before attempting an abrupt energy transition