Natural gas and Biofuels

Natural gas is a fossil fuel formed when layers of buried plants and animals are exposed to intense heat and pressure over thousands of years. These animals and plants originally produced an energy that came from the sun, and it is stored in the form of carbon in natural gas. NG is combusted to generate electricity, allowing this energy to turn into power. Natural gas is a non-renewable resource. However, it is clean, convenient to use and easy to transport, therefore it is called as an ideal fossil fuel. Industrial users use almost half of the gas produced in the U.S.

In consequence to the increase of shale gas development and new technologies in recent years, the United States today has enough natural gas to power their nation for generations.

Source: http://anga.us/why-natural-gas/abundant/shale-plays#.UyDnA_l_vC8

The combustion of natural gas produces carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides at the power plant, however in small quantities than burning coal or oil. In the US, the average emissions rates from natural gas-fired generation are: 1135 lbs / MWh of carbon dioxide, 0.1 lbs / MWh of sulfur dioxide, and 1.7 lbs / MWh of nitrogen oxides [1]. When comparing with average air emissions from coal-fired generation, natural gas produces one percent as much sulfur oxides at the power plant, less than a third as much nitrogen oxides and half as much carbon dioxide. However, extracting, treating and transporting natural gas produces additional emissions.

Taking into account the higher carbon efficiency in the generation process, and adding together every benefit of using natural gas instead of other fossil fuels, the United States is dramatically switching its major fuel. The US has changed to reduce coal and increase natural gas ge...

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...rable to supply disruption, price chances and trade deficits. Therefore, biodiesel is helping the US to reduce the petroleum importation, and consequently increasing jobs opportunities and improving the environment.

This fuel’s physical properties are very similar to those of petroleum diesel. One of the major advantages of using biodiesel is that it can be used in any pre-existing diesel engines. In addition, it reduces the GHG emissions by 57 per cent at least, in comparison to petroleum diesel, because the CO2 released from biodiesel burn is offset by the CO2 sequestered while growing the soybeans or other feedstock [3]. The biodiesel also helps to reduce tailpipe emissions of unburned hydrocarbons (HC), carbon monoxide (CO), sulphates, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, nitrated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and particulate matter (PM), one of the US most dan