Fuels Of The Future
Ethanol
Biodiesel
Hydrogen
Links
Ethanol producing plant in
Kansas. Many new ones are coming online in the United States. Photo
courtesy of Popular
Mechanics.
Ethanol is a common fuel that can be produced from many different crops, for example corn is a common feedstock for ethanol production here in the United States. Other countries around the world produce large amounts of ethanol to power many of their vehicles. For example Brazil has a perfect climate to grow sugarcane, which is a great feedstock for ethanol. As a result many of their cars run on pure ethanol. Here in the United States you have probably heard of Flexible Fuel Vehicles (FFV's) which are being marketed by General Motors corporation with their "live green, go yellow" campaign slogan. These vehicles can run on straight gasoline or E85 fuel (85 percent ethanol). They have sensors in the fuel lines that can tell the percentage of ethanol in the fuel and adjust spark and injection timing as necessary.
Ethanol can be run in a regular gasoline engine, but with a loss in fuel efficiency, as much as 34% (Ethanol-Wikipedia). However if the engine is designed to run on pure ethanol the efficiency can be the same or even greater than that of a gasoline engine. After all ethanol is a high quality race fuel! An ethanol engine will not be backwards compatible with gasoline though.
Ethanol is also extremely clean burning and can be used to help with emmissions controls, some states actually mandate that all gasoline sold be E10 (10 percent ethanol). The United States in general is moving in the direction of using ethanol to help with emmissions because of the adverse enviromental effects of some other chemicals that are currently being used to help with emmissions (Ethanol-Wikipedia).