ETHANOL AS AN ALTERNATIVE CAR FUEL

Nowadays, ethanol is used as an alternative car fuel thanks to its physical and chemical properties. Ethanol has many advantages and it is applied in many industries, especially car fuel manufacturing. However, there are still some limitations of ethanol that we have to improve and make it more efficient for ethanol to be used worldwide and also reduce the greenhouse gas emissions and save the environment. 1. Energy content of fuel: Ethanol has only two-thirds the energy content of gasoline due to the molecular formula of ethanol (CH3CH2OH) which contains only 2 carbons. Meanwhile, gasoline is a mixture of various hydrocarbons; the main one is octane (C8H18) which contains 8 carbons, four times as ethanol. Therefore, ethanol has very low energy content. 2. Cost of production: It is currently expensive to produce ethanol. To economically compete with petrol or gasoline, the production of ethanol needs to be made more efficient in order that the costs of production might decrease. Ethanol is produced either from starch, corn, sugar cane or cellulosic feedstock. Generally, to get ethanol from any of the above sources, fermentation, thermochemical conversion or biochemical conversion requires high amount of energy or takes a lot of time to convert starch, sugar or cellulose to ethanol. If using cellulosic feedstock as a source, it takes another process which is hydrolysis with cellulase enzyme to get glucose (C6H12O6) and produce ethanol. Moreover, ethanol must be pure and not contain water to use as a car fuel; therefore, distillation and water removal are required. 3. Environmental effect: Because ethanol is a biofuel and production of ethanol requires cellulosic feedstock and crops, many trees are cut or burnt down to supply for the producing process. This causes problems with erosion, salinity of soils and destroying forests. However, as a biofuel, ethanol can be environmentally friendly. Because it contains less carbons than petrol or gasoline, less carbon dioxides are produced and this lowers greenhouse emissions in theory

(CO2 is a greenhouse gas). When cars burn petrol, it produces more CO2 and also NO. NO is a toxic gas which can increase the amount of ozone (O3) in the atmosphere. But ethanol does not contain any nitrogen atoms; therefore it reduces ozone formation. 4. Renewability: Ethanol is produced from fermentation of glucose present in plants which can be regrown; therefore, ethanol is regarded as a renewable resource. Ethanol is a biofuel, different from petroleum or gasoline. Petroleum is produced from cracking crude oil, which is a fossil fuel and non-renewable resource. This is the reason for ethanol to have higher renewability than petroleum and gasoline. 5. Compatibility with technology: Ethanol is commonly used for cars engines. Most cars can run on a 10% ethanol / 90% petrol mix without damage or the need to modify the fuel system of the engine. Because the energy got from ethanol is not high enough as petrol, percentage of petrol in car engines is still high. However, in flexible fuel vehicles (FFVs) engines, the percentage of ethanol is much higher (about 70 to 100% pure ethanol). Therefore, FFVs can maximise use of ethanols benefits. Because ethanol has high flash point, this makes it harder to ignite in cold climates or weather, which leads to a problem of spark the ignition to start the engine in cold weather. Ethanol blends in use today have little impact on fuel economy or vehicle performance. Todays vehicles are designed to run on gasoline blended with 10 percent of ethanol or less with no perceptible effect on fuel economy.