Research Problem

The study entitled “Anacardium occidentale as a Good Source of Biofuel” aims to determine and prove whether the Anacardium occidentale can be a good source of biofuel.
”The fuel of the future is going to come from fruit like that sumac out by the road, or from apples, weeds, sawdust — almost anything. There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented. There’s enough alcohol in one year’s yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a hundred year”, an idea which was well expressed by Henry Ford in a1925 interview with the New York Times.
We are constantly being told that the era of cheap oil is over, but the truth is that the era of oil of any kind is going to be over as well. It’s finite and every aspect of it is both dirty and expensive, right down to the wars that are being fought over it.
According to William Kovarik, 2007, fueling up with ethanol and vegetable oils was common long before the development of the internal combustion engine. Vegetable and animal oil lamps have been used since the dawn of civilization. Increasingly efficient heaters and lamps meant that higher quality fuels were developed One of Ben Franklin’s spirit lamps is on display in a Philadelphia exhibit. Naturally, early inventors turned to common portable fuels to power automobiles. In 1826, Vermont inventor Samuel Morey powered an early prototype of an internal combustion engine with distilled spirit. German engineer Nicholas Otto’s first experiments in the 1860s with engines involved ethanol as well. Around the 1850s, lamp fuels in the US and Europe were usually made from animal and vegetable oils, often combined with alcohol
The conversion of plant sugars into alcohol has been occurring for as long as history has been recorded. As far back as 10,000BC people were making beer, possibly even before bread was first produced. The process of distillation of an ethanol solution is very simple and has been and still is employed by home distillers around the world for making beverages such as fortified wines, whiskey, moonshine, vodka and so on. This is an effective process, so much so that some alcoholic beverages can act as fuels and burn once introduced to a flame. If biofuels are to be adopted in a serious manner for the long term we need to develop ways of producing them that do not compromise food production. In order to be economically viable, biofuel crops need to produce the highest possible fuel output. In the United States corn is the politically preferred crop for biofuel and it is the corn cob itself that is the source of the raw materials for making fuel. Making fuel out of the plant matter left over after a crop is harvested is another possibility. Plants are made mainly of cellulose which is simply very long chains of sugar molecules joined together. It is the intertwining and chemical bonding between strands of cellulose that make them so hard to digest.
Biofuels are the best way of reducing the emission of the greenhouse gases. They can also be looked upon as a way of energy security which stands as an alternative of fossil fuels that are limited in availability. Today, the use of biofuels has expanded globally. Some of the major producers and users of biogases are Asia, Europe and America. Theoretically, biofuel can be easily produced through any carbon source; making the photosynthetic plants the most commonly used material for production. Almost all types of materials derived from the plants are used for manufacturing biogas.
Since the study is just a continuation of the previous research, the researcher conducted the study to determine and prove if Anacardium occidentale can be a good source of biofuel. Also, to know the amount of biofuel if a kilo of Anacardium occidentale will be extracted. Through this, Anacardium occidentale will have use other than what we are used to. The researcher had then chosen Anacardium occidentale as the subject since it is uncommonly used in the said field. Also, Anacardium occidentale is a product which is abundantly available in the country every year and much of it is wasted, could be an excellent source of bio-fuel that could be effectively used for the production of ethanol.