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Is Bamboo The Next Big Biofuel?

The future of how petrol and diesel cars will be powered will not consist of fossil fuels, given that at some point a resource that took thousands of years to produce will inevitably run out.

This means that a growing number of tanks fitted with a vacuum relief valve are made of biofuels, which consist of any fuel made from biological material such as plants, algae or waste from animals.

The problem with some forms of biofuel, however, is that producing biofuel at scale can cause farmers to grow plants with that in mind instead of food crops, which can cause other issues.

However, a report from GCB Bioenergy suggests a potential crop that would not need to be grown on high-quality land, grows quickly, is a particularly potent carbon capture crop and would avoid the risk of food insecurity that can sometimes emerge from biofuel harvests.

Bamboo is already a widely used and widely sought-after plant for a variety of purposes, and the report claims that fermentation and pyrolysis can convert it into bioethanol and biochar, two core parts of any modern biofuels.

This would seem to make it an ideal choice, although it must be noted that this research is currently at an exceedingly early stage and it would be somewhat presumptuous to describe it as the future of biofuel.

Part of the issue is that bamboo is a more diverse crop than one might expect, and it will take extensive future research to find which particular species can produce the most bamboo fuel at

the lowest cost.

As well as this, one must always be mindful that early research is not always a sign of a future that will or even can be pursued.

At one point, it was believed that the future of biofuel would be algae-derived, but whilst initially promising, the production process used so much energy that it could potentially be more of a carbon generator than conventional diesel.

Ultimately, it will take some time to see what the future holds for bamboo.