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Biofuels Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz6rdco_v7k

Fireside Productions, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)

This video provides an overview of the research of the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) on converting biomass to liquid fuels.

Video length: 5:19 min.

Learn more about Teaching Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness»


Notes From Our Reviewers The CLEAN collection is hand-picked and rigorously reviewed for scientific accuracy and classroom effectiveness. Read what our review team had to say about this resource below or learn more about how CLEAN reviews teaching materials
Teaching Tips | Science | Pedagogy | Technical Details

Teaching Tips

  • References on biomass/biofuel research are given at the bottom of the webpage.

About the Content

  • NREL scientists introduce and review the problems of biomass energy and how they are working to solve those problems.
  • A video about the principles of converting biomass to liquid transportation fuels.
  • The video is somewhat dated, making references to President Bush's 2006 State of the Union Address. Government policy with regards to biofuels is now different from what it was when this video was made.
  • Comments from expert scientist: This video presents NREL scientists's effort to made ethanol from cellulose and hemicellulose. These are the fibrous material that are abundant in nature and make up the bulk of most plant matter.
  • The goal is generating Bio-fuels to address the energy crisis.

About the Pedagogy

  • The video is embedded in NREL's Learning about Renewable Energy - Biofuels page. It is one page in their Learning sequence.
  • There is mention of how current research is working on ending the "fuel vs. feed" debate, which raises the question of whether food crop biomass should go toward feeding people or making biofuels.

Technical Details/Ease of Use

  • Text version of video is provided.
  • The video cannot be displayed at full screen.
Entered the Collection: May 2012 Last Reviewed: June 2016

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