quarta-feira, 11 de dezembro de 2013

Biodiesel

Biodiesel is a fuel made from a vegetable oil by chemically reacting lipids with an alcohol. Biodiesel is used as a alternative fuel replacing fossil fuel for diesel engines, being used by itself or combined with petroleum diesel. The reaction is shown below:

Biodiesel can be used as vehicular fuel, heating oil, cleaning oil. Some typical yields are from chinese tallow, palm oil, coconut, rapeseed, soy (image below), peanut, sunflower.

Soy biodiesel. (Source)

The Twelve Soils of the World

There are 12 soils categories around the world. The soils taxonomy places these 12 categories called orders. They are:

Gelisols | Histosols | Spodosols | Andisols | Oxisols | Vertisols | Aridisols | Ultisols | Mollisols | Alfisols | Inceptsols | Entisols

At this link, we can obtain more information about the 12 orders and see the distribution of these orders in the USA.

The image below shows us the distribution of these 12 orders around the world.

Soil Orders around the world. (Source: http://www.cals.uidaho.edu/soilorders/i/worldorders.jpg)