Does anyone know anything about ethanol?

Question

Any fact will do!!! (I need it for a report I'm doing about using ethanol as a fuel) I have done a little research, but many of the sites I'm looking at I can't understand (I'm just starting my GCSEs this year), and would really appreciate it if somebody could tell me a little about it?!

Answer 1

You ferment anything starchy using yeast, water and warmth. Fermentation is what happens when yeast turns the strarch in to sugar and then into alcohol. After a while the yeast stops working beause the alcohol level in the water gets too high. When this happens you can distill the alcohol from the water (it has a lower boiling point than water so you can separate it by heating the mixture,  to just below water's boiling point). That's not very efficient so you have to dry the alcohol further, possibly by freezing it (its freezing temperature is lower than water so the water freezes leaving the alcohol as a liquid). When you've got the water level down to about 1% of the alcohol by volume, you can add the alcohol to gasoline (at upto about 15%) and you have biofuel! You could add more ethanol than that but most production cars don't work very well.

Answer 2

I drink it in some form or another most days.

Answer 3

The only thing i know is:

you put it in you car mixed with gas

Answer 4

E85 is the term for motor fuel blends of 85 percent ethanol and just 15 percent gasoline. E85 is an alternative fuel as defined by the U.S. Department of Energy. Besides its superior performance characteristics, ethanol burns cleaner than gasoline; it is a completely renewable, domestic,  environmentally friendly fuel that enhances the nation's economy and energy independence.

Today, the U. S. imports more than half of its oil, and overall consumption continues to increase. By supporting ethanol production and use, U.S. drivers can help reverse that trend. 85% ethanol can reduce pollution. Government tests have shown that E85 vehicles reduce harmful hydrocarbon and benzene emissions when compared to vehicles running on gasoline. E85 can also reduce carbon dioxide (CO2), a harmful greenhouse gas and a major contributor to global warming.

Although CO2 is released during ethanol production and combustion, it is recaptured as a nutrient to the crops that are used in its production. Unlike fossil fuel combustion, which unlocks carbon that has been stored for millions of years, use of ethanol results in no increases to the carbon cycle.

Ethanol also degrades quickly in water and, therefore, poses much less risk to the environment than an oil or gasoline spill.

Cars running on ethanol, which is distilled from agricultural crops and biomass are governed by the same laws of physics as those using petrol in that both fuels emit CO2 as a consequence of combustion, however the crucial difference is that burning ethanol recycles CO2 because it has already been removed from the atmosphere by photosynthesis during the natural growth of agricultural crops, such as corn plants. A corn plant removes CO2 from the atmosphere and uses it to grow and produce cornstarch. The plant is harvested and the cornstarch is fermented into ethanol. The ethanol is burned and the cycle repeats. NO NEW NET CARBON is added to the atmosphere when you use ethanol, unlike gasoline which spews tons of carbon into the atmosphere which has been trapped beneath the earth's surface for millions of years in the form of crude oil. You can burn all the ethanol you want and you are not contributing one iota to global warming. You are simply recycling carbon. And creating demand for ethanol by using it in your car stimulates farmers to plant more corn to meet the demand. More corn means more CO2 is removed from the atmosphere because corn, like all plants, takes in CO2 and gives off oxygen via photosynthesis. So not only are you not adding any new carbon to the air when you use ethanol, you are stimulating the planting of more corn plants which naturally fight global warming via photosynthesis.

In addition, using ethanol means no more devastating oil spills in the ocean which destroy all kinds of marine life and birds. And ethanol is now being produced via "green" means with ZERO fossil fuels used in the process. Read that again---ZERO FOSSIL FUELS ARE BEING USED TO MAKE ETHANOL. Ethanol plants are using wind energy and biomass exclusively for power because it saves them a heap on their natural gas bill. Below are 2 links to prove it:

http://www.connectbiz.com/stories/moonsh...

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/12/...

Below are 2 more links to learn more about ethanol and its benefits.

Answer 5

It is a distilled product made from grain, usually corn, and it is extraordinarily expensive, and not environmentally friendly (uses great amounts of water) to produce.  That quality makes it very profitable for manufactures, and costly for consumers (something common to us all) to purchase.  It burns fairly efficiently, but the fact that it burns is a continuation for the pollution factor.  Let's encourage electric/solar energy for transportation use in the near future!!!

Answer 6

I know that I have been using ethanol for years in my cars.  One of it's ingredients is corn, at least here in the midwest.  I don't know much about the process, but I do know that it is better for your car.  It is better for your engine, and in the winter it helps keep your gas line from freezing.

Answer 7

read this about ethanol production

Only transient Aliens could have aproved that.

They are intending to replace most of the indigenous Forrest's in the world ,with mono cultures for the production of Ethanol,

Non sustainable, chemically grown ,heavily irrigated (with water needed for communities)one specie Forrest's,that have only plagues of insects as fauna which are controlled with pesticides.

Killing all bio diversity,in both flora and fauna ,adding to the destruction and extinction of species ,like nothing we have ever seen before.

All in the quest for alternative energy and to save the Environment ,

The irony here is that the growing eagerness to slow climate change by using biofuels and planting millions of trees for carbon credits has resulted in new major causes of deforestation, say activists. And that is making climate change worse because deforestation puts far more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire world's fleet of cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships combined.

"Biofuels are rapidly becoming the main cause of deforestation in countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Brazil," said Simone Lovera, managing coordinator of the Global Forest Coalition, an environmental NGO based in Asunción, Paraguay. "We call it 'deforestation diesel'," Lovera told IPS.

Oil from African palm trees is considered to be one of the best and cheapest sources of biodiesel and energy companies are investing billions into acquiring or developing oil-palm plantations in developing countries. Vast tracts of forest in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and many other countries have been cleared to grow oil palms. Oil palm has become the world's number one fruit crop, well ahead of bananas.

Biodiesel offers many environmental benefits over diesel from petroleum, including reductions in air pollutants, but the enormous global thirst means millions more hectares could be converted into monocultures of oil palm. Getting accurate numbers on how much forest is being lost is very difficult.

The FAO's State of the World's Forests 2007 released last week reports that globally, net forest loss is 20,000 hectares per day -- equivalent to an area twice the size of Paris. However, that number includes plantation forests, which masks the actual extent of tropical deforestation, about 40,000 hectares (ha) per day, says Matti Palo, a forest economics expert who is affiliated with the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) in Costa Rica.

"The half a million ha per year deforestation of Mexico is covered by the increase of forests in the U.S., for example," Palo told IPS.

National governments provide all the statistics, and countries like Canada do not produce anything reliable, he said. Canada has claimed no net change in its forests for 15 years despite being the largest producer of pulp and paper. "Canada has a moral responsibility to tell the rest of the world what kind of changes have taken place there," he said.

Plantation forests are nothing like natural or native forests. More akin to a field of maize, plantation forests are hostile environments to nearly every animal, bird and even insects. Such forests have been shown to have a negative impact on the water cycle because non-native, fast-growing trees use high volumes of water. Pesticides are also commonly used to suppress competing growth from other plants and to prevent disease outbreaks, also impacting water quality.

Plantation forests also offer very few employment opportunities, resulting in a net loss of jobs. "Plantation forests are a tremendous disaster for biodiversity and local people," Lovera said. Even if farmland or savanna are only used for oil palm or other plantations, it often forces the local people off the land and into nearby forests, including national parks, which they clear to grow crops, pasture animals and collect firewood. That has been the pattern with pulp and timber plantation forests in much of the world, says Lovera.

Ethanol is other major biofuel, which is made from maize, sugar cane or other crops. As prices for biofuels climb, more land is cleared to grow the crops. U.S. farmers are switching from soy to maize to meet the ethanol demand. That is having a knock on effect of pushing up soy prices, which is driving the conversion of the Amazon rainforest into soy, she says. Meanwhile rich countries are starting to plant trees to offset their emissions of carbon dioxide, called carbon sequestration. Most of this planting is taking place in the South in the form of plantations, which are just the latest threat to existing forests. "Europe's carbon credit market could be disastrous," Lovera said.

The multi-billion-euro European carbon market does not permit the use of reforestation projects for carbon credits. But there has been a tremendous surge in private companies offering such credits for tree planting projects. Very little of this money goes to small land holders, she says. Plantation forests also contain much less carbon, notes Palo, citing a recent study that showed carbon content of plantation forests in some Asian tropical countries was only 45 percent of that in the respective natural forests. Nor has the world community been able to properly account for the value of the enormous volumes of carbon stored in existing forests.

One recent estimate found that the northern Boreal forest provided 250 billion dollars a year in ecosystem services such as absorbing carbon emissions from the atmosphere and cleaning water. The good news is that deforestation, even in remote areas, is easily stopped. All it takes is access to some low-cost satellite imagery and governments that actually want to slow or halt deforestation. Costa Rica has nearly eliminated deforestation by making it illegal to convert forest into farmland, says Lovera.

Paraguay enacted similar laws in 2004, and then regularly checked satellite images of its forests, sending forestry officials and police to enforce the law where it was being violated. "Deforestation has been reduced by 85 percent in less than two years in the eastern part of the country," Lovera noted. The other part of the solution is to give control over forests to the local people. This community or model forest concept has proved to be sustainable in many parts of the world. India recently passed a bill returning the bulk of its forests back to local communities for management, she said.

However, economic interests pushing deforestation in countries like Brazil and Indonesia are so powerful, there may eventually be little natural forest left. "Governments are beginning to realize that their natural forests have enormous value left standing," Lovera said. "A moratorium or ban on deforestation is the only way to stop this."

This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS and IFEJ - International Federation of Environmental Journalists.

© 2007 IPS - Inter Press Service

Source: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/...