Ethanol's Potential as an Alternative Fuel.

As explained in the last post, ethanol as an alternative fuel is currently available in some parts of the world in small concentrations when mixed with ordinary petrol (roughly 10-15 percent). But what if we were to expand the use of ethanol to a much larger scale? What advantages and disadvantages would present themselves to us and society as a whole? This is going to be the main topic of today's post.
When governments and societies debate the use of ethanol as an alternative fuel, they usually argue about three important things that will in the long term (and sometimes the short) affect them if the wrong choice is made. These are : Energy Balance(Fuel Efficiency, Miles to the Gallon e.c.t), Economics, and Environmental impacts.
The most advantageous use of ethanol as a fuel would be the fact that its greenhouse gas emissions are much much lower than that of petrol. According to the U.S environmental protection agency (EPA), each gallon of petrol produces approximately 8.8 kilograms of Carbon Dioxide (where one gallon is equal to about 3.7 litres). Studies at Argonne National Laboratory of the university of Chicago have shown that the use of cellulosic ethanol may reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a whopping 85 percent. This, in comparison to petrol, shows that ethanol burns much cleaner, leading to a reduction in the amount of harmful gases being released into our atmosphere.
Another advantage to using ethanol as fuel is the fact that it is completely renewable when made from various biomass, mostly corn, starch and grain crops. Another advantage to the renewablility of ethanol is the fact that the plants grown will be domestic. When a country needs a product imported from another country, lets say oil in this case, it means that the country is relying on the producer for that oil. The producer, can increase prices according to demand, introduce taxes and force the buyer to trade something of theirs in return for the oil. This domestically grown crop, means that people will be able to buy ethanol-fuel that is home grown. Home grown fuel means, cheaper prices since they wont be buying something that is produced abroad, cutting export costs, taxes and tariffs.
As everything comes in pairs, we all know that with advantages, come disadvantages. These disadvantages have been heavily debated as whether they will affect us in the long run or not.
One of the most serious disadvantages of using ethanol as fuel, is the energy balance in its production. In simpler terms, this means the amount of energy used to make the ethanol compared to the amount of energy the finished product (Ethanol in this case) contains. In an article about the negative effects of ethanol as a fuel, it was shown that the amount of energy needed to produce the ethanol actually surpassed the amount of energy that the ethanol contained. To be exact, the production of ethanol per gallon needed 29 percent more energy than the it actually contained, and this was disregarding the energy needed to distribute and transport the ethanol. In the 1980's, Brazil attempted to totally switch to ethanol fuel for their cars but this resulted in an economic failure that was catastrophic. At the time, the Brazilian government was selling the ethanol fuel for 85 cents a gallon when it costs 125 cents a gallon to make. Because of this the government had to abandon the subsidies for growing crops used for ethanol production. Without the subsidy, producers stopped producing these crops as they could no longer make a profit from them.The link below shows the exact amounts of energy produced along with tables to compare energy input and output.
                            

                     http://artsci.wustl.edu/~anthro/articles/pimentel-ethanol.pdf

Another disadvantage that could seriously jeopardise the expansion of ethanol as fuel is its fuel efficiency in cars. Many people who use E85 ( That is a fuel of 85 percent ethanol to 15 percent petrol) have noticed that their mileage on their cars has reduced since switching to Ethanol fuel. When using E10 a person will experience, 3-4 percent fewer miles to the gallon and people using E85 will experience a massive 25-30 percent drop in miles to the gallon then when using straight out gasoline. This means that the fuel is not efficient and is actually costing you money every time you go and fill up the tank. Because the ethanol fuel has lower mileage, meaning it doesn't get your car as far per gallon of ethanol, this means that you have to fill up your gas tank more often to get to the places that you need to go. This all means, that in the long run, switching to ethanol based fuel, will actually cost you money !

Below is a video of a newscast showing an example of a person who switched to ethanol based fuel and since then has experienced and actually shown that his mileage has dropped, effectively costing him money.

Many advantages and disadvantages exist when debating the future use of ethanol as a fuel. I believe that to have ethanol as an alternative fuel source that is efficient, economical and environmentally stable many improvements and and technologies must be developed. For example, until we can find ways of making ethanol production more energy efficient many farmers will not raise the necessary crop needed for its production.

This has been another blog by Youshaa Ghanem, reporting for the Science Weekly Website. Thank you all for reading and log back in next week to view my blog on space travel and the opportunities it presents.

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