Bioenergy

In Singapore, there are a few companies such as “Neste oil”, “BioFuel Research Pte Ltd” and “Alpha-Biodiesel” that have very large refineries to produce biofuel. Biofuels have several disadvantages.

  • The energy output of biofuel are lower than the current source of fuel, which means that larger amount of biofuels are needed to produce the same amount of energy as compared to fossil fuel.
  • Production of biofuel requires equipment that are very costly and this increases the initial capital, which will in turn increases the price of biofuel. Thus new technology and research have to be done to find out better and more efficient ways to generate biofuel.
  • In order to run on biofuel, machines might have to cater their fuel tanks and engines to the type of fuel they running, which makes biofuel unpopular as there are very few machines that run on biofuel.
  • There must be a stable source of raw material to produce biofuel. In Singapore, main source of raw materials are sewage, cooking oil and other leftover oils and animal fats. The recycling reduces the waste in Singapore, but it also has a limit in the production due to the limited amount of waste that are recyclable. In Singapore, with majority of food are imported from other countries, it is highly unlikely to harvest biofuel from crops.
  • There are researches that show that biofuel produces more air pollutants (CO, CO2, N, etc) which worsen the greenhouse effect than fossil fuel.
  • Researches in Singapore currently focus on producing biofuel from plants and algae with little progress.

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