Sustainability is a Challenge

What is Ethanol?

Humans discovered ethanol not long after they figured out how to put fire to good use. Today, ethanol has many uses: you can  use it in food and other manufacturing; and blend it with petrol to make a truly sustainable and renewable transport fuel. Bioethanol - or simply ‘ethanol’ - is an alcohol which is made by fermenting the sugar and starch components of plant materials by using yeast such as saccharomyces cerevisae. Ethanol can be used as a fuel for vehicles in its pure form as a replacement for gasoline, but it is usually blended with gasoline so as to improve vehicle emissions.

Argentina’s largest ethanol plant commences operations
30 October 2013

Austria-based Vogelbusch Biocommodities has announced the opening of a bioethanol plant in Alejandro Roca, Argentina this October.
The plant, owned by producing company Promaíz, has a capacity of 420,000 litres per day which makes it the largest of its kind in the country. The facility uses ethanol technology licensed by Vogelbusch designed for both high performance in terms of primary energy and freshwater consumption and for full compliance with emission standards.
In Argentina, petrol must contain 5% ethanol and the fuel ethanol production is government controlled under a quota system which assigns supply shares to the producers. Promaí made its first ethanol delivery within this quota system from the new plant in August.  ‘We always attach importance to the environmental sustainability of plants we design,’ says Ernst Trimmel, project manager at Vogelbusch. ‘With this new Promaíz facility, maximum recycling and recovery of process streams defined its design from the very start.’

What can be the use of  Ethanol?

Ethanol is commonly used in cars and light vehicles, along with certain two and four stroke engines. Ethanol has a much higher octane rating than petrol so is commonly used for high performance vehicles such as race cars. At higher ethanol blends such as E85 there is a significant increase in power for the vehicle. However depending on your car you might see a slight increase in fuel consumption – between 1 and 3%. Other factors such as driving style, tyre pressure, and the removal of roof racks more than compensate for these changes. Effect on Emission Reductions The use of ethanol blended fuels can significantly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, over a full lifecycle analysis from production through to use in the vehicle. In Australia in 2008, our gasoline demand equaled 18,900,000,000 litres of fuel.   The US EPA states that one litre of gasoline equals 2.33kg of CO2.  So in terms of Australia’s 2008 consumption of gasoline, we emitted 44,037,000,000kgs or 44 million tonnes of CO2. The US EPA also states that one litre of cellulosic ethanol reduces net emissions of CO2 by over 90.9%, so one litre of ethanol will save 2.11kg of CO2. So by replacing Australia’s total annual consumption of gasoline with ethanol, we would reduce our CO2 emissions to 4 million tonnes, saving 40 million tonnes per year. At the moment ethanol tends to be blended up to 10%.  However there are very strong moves by many car manufacturers to be E85 compatible.  If all cars were E85 compatible, we’d be saving about 30 million tonnes of CO2 each year. Courtesy:Bio fuels Associations of Australia