In the high tech world of 2007, Society requires an enormous amount of energy to function efficiently. Oil has been a predominate form of fuel; however, it has also incurred many conflicts in politics, war, and environmental issues. As the growing concern over oil’s future evolves, new alternative forms of energy are being sought out and significant advancement has been made with hybrid cars, ethanol, and several other alternative fuel forms.  Such advancements have also aroused much controversy over their effectiveness and capacity to replace oil. 

One attempt to rectify this situation was made by Purdue when the “tactical bio-refinery” was devised. The idea behind this machinery is to conveniently take common trash and in a sense, “recycle” it into energy.  One plus is that this bio-refinery accommodates a diversified fuel source consisting of food, paper, and plastic.  Ethanol is created from the food section of the machine. Propane and methane gas are byproducts of the paper and plastic sections. Both ethanol and the gases are used to power the engine which operates similar to that of a diesel engine, while using the engine to produce electricity. The bio-refinery has proven to be quite successful in preliminary tests and only produces a minimal amount of “waste” that is minimally hazardous to the environment. 

This bio-refinery is intended first for military use, yet many have aspirations that it will be used throughout society soon. It has numerous advantages to other generators. For example, it can serve those suffering in disaster situations due to the usual excessive abundance of trash and waste. It will prove to be extremely beneficial to the military at sites where transportation of fuel consumes an enormous amount of man-power and unfortunately increases risk immensely. This bio-refinery is truly a substantial advancement in the process of discovering alternative fuel sources and methods.  

 *specifics in this article were cited from the following sources:  

 http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/18183/  

 http://news.uns.purdue.edu/x/2007a/070201LadischBio.html