A Model Study of Growth of Publications on the Field of Biofuels

Abstract

There is a great interest in biofuels production as an alternative and potentially renewable fuel. This study analyzed the rate of scientific publications related to the biofuels such as biodiesel, bioethanol, biogas, biohydrogen and wood pellets using the Logistic and Gompertz models to quantitatively describe the publications growth. The models showed fit to the biofuels growth data as indicated by the determination coefficient. China was the most productive country with publications of biohydrogen, bioethanol, biodiesel and biogas. Overall, research on the topic of biofuels, biohydrogen and bioethanol are increasing with a rate of publications greater than 0.26 years-1. From 2003 there was growth in the rate of publications of each biofuel evaluated in this work.