About Renewable Fuels
Economic and industrial development worldwide depends on reliable sources of energy, most often combustible fuels. With petroleum supplies falling short of global demand, many countries such as Brazil, South Africa and China are pursuing other ways of powering their economies. The technologies differ and for some alternative fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel, their success has been limited by unintended technical and market consequences. One trend is common to all these examples, however: each of these countries has attempted to reduce dependence on petroleum product imports. The goal is greater security through self-reliance, which is equally important to the United States.
To date, biofuels have been defined as solid, liquid, or gas fuels derived from biological, renewable sources called biomass. Some examples of biomass that can be used to produce biofuels today include sugar crops, corn grains, grain byproducts, oil seed crops, animal fats, algae oil, trees and grasses.
In order to create biofuels from biomass, the biomass must go through an appropriate chemical reaction. For example, to produce an alcohol-based biofuel like ethanol a biomass source, such as corn, must first be fermented (like beer or wine) using a microorganism to produce the product. Biodiesel producers typically employ a process called transesterfication.
An alternative fuel can still qualify as renewable if it uses garbage as a raw material either directly or in combination with other source of biomass. Rational Energies has the capability to combine biomass feedstocks with material derived from MSW to make renewable fuels. However, in order to be economically sustainable we are starting, as a first step, by using only plastic recovered from MSW. This will result in a super “sweet” and super “light” synthetic petroleum product, meaning it contains little or no sulfur and tar and other impurities commonly found in petroleum. Eventually, we plan to incorporate technologies into our process that will result in renewable, clean diesel and gasoline.