How can we use alcohol as fuel?

Question

Also tell its advantages and bad effects............

Answer 1

Alcohol burns like gasoline in cars. All engines take 10% alcohol. Many take 85% to 100%.

Brazil uses sugar cane and their alcohol is dirt cheap. America has to use corn which is very expensive.

Answer 2

Alcohol in high concentrations can be burned just like gasoline.

Pros: It burns cleaner (up to 70% less carcinogens and about 30% less overall pollutants)

It has a higher octane rating

It burns smoother

It reduces knock

No sludge

It doesn't smell bad

renewable (it works with the carbon cycle)

made here in the US

cheaper (prices are also more stable)

Cons: Not all gasoline engines can run on it

some flex fuel engines may experience a drop in fuel economy (5-15% drop)

Current methods are not as efficient as we'd like

can't pipeline (corrosive)

Regarding the Cons: Engines designed to run on Ethanol and Ethanol only can get the same as, if not better, fuel economy than a comparative gasoline engine. Although current methods and sources are not efficient, we are about a decade from cellulose ethanol which can be made from almost any organic matter with an energy return of 1:16 (you put in 1 unit of energy, you get 16 back). True, ethanol is corrosive, but a simple coating can take care of that. In fact, all cars since the 1980s already have this coating and it is essentially teflon.

Food and Fuel: People mention that we will be feeding out cars and not our people. That is not entirely true. A large portion of corn in the US is used as ethanol, that is true. For example, Illinois is the 2nd largest producer of corn (behind Iowa) and the largest producer of ethanol (40% or our corn). However, only 1% of all ethanol is used as fuel. The rest is used as solvents and other stuff. In a short time, we will have readily availiable cellulose ethanol. We can make cellulose ethanol out of anything from waste wood to lawn clippings. We can also recycle bad boose and alcohol (human consumption) byproducts and waste into ethanol for our cars.

Answer 3

I run just the saame. My neigbor is talking about using green ale to power his ethanol vehicle.

Answer 4

Alcohol is not being used directly as fuel. In India, we are blending Ethanol one form of alcohol with petrol and use as fuel. Our Govt is planning to ensure further blending with increased ratio.

Answer 5

We can use alcohol as a fuel, instead of gasoline, preferably with a 15 percent mix of gasoline.

the disadvantage of it is that we are using mostly corn to make it right now.

and we are using fossil fuel to heat it,  so that it will distill the mash into alcohol.

but the advantages is. it produces less emissions, some say as low as 1/3 of gasoline.

It is renewable.

It can be made from almost any thing organic, including pond scum.

It can also be make using solar powered electricity for the heat.

Answer 6

the first thing you have to understand is that there are two basic forms of alcohol that are used for engine fuel;

ethanol

methanol

ethanol is the better of the two for most uses as it is a renewable fuel, and you need less of it to replace gasoline.

methanol is petroleum based, and requires more fuel to make the same amount of power that gasoline does.

both ethanol and methanol have higher octane ratings than gasoline does, and thus you can run more compression and ignition timing to take advantage of that higher octane rating.

alcohol however is hygroscopic, meaning it absorbs water. also alcohol needs to be a minimum of 160 proof(80%) to be a motor fuel. one more thing, alcohol fuels have poor cold weather operation characteristics, which is why E85 is being used in flex fueled vehicles.

if you have fuel injection you need to run larger injectors, add a flex fuel sensor, and update the fuel lines to alcohol proof lines. you may also need to reprogram or replace the computer. this will allow you to run straight gasoline to E85 fuel.

if you have a carburetted engine, you need larger jets, a change int he power valve system, alcohol proof fuel lines, remove all the plastic from the system, and replace the floats in the carburettor with brass ones as needed. the nytrophil floats will be destroyed by the alcohol. the problem though with setting up a carburettor to run alcohol is that you can only run alcohol. if you used gasoline, you would have an extremely rich condition.

Answer 7

Corn ethanol probably creates as many problems as it solves, and is likely to be only a short-term solution to jump-start a biofuels

industry. To turn corn into fuel, you take the 72 percent of the corn kernel that’s starch and break it down into a simple sugar, called glucose, with the aid of an enzyme. Then, using a process that we’ve

all been fond of for thousands of years—that is,brewing beer with the help of microorganisms—we ferment the glucose. However, growing and processing the corn requires substantial amounts of resources like energy, water, and fertilizer. The yield is low, because you only get a small amount of biomass that you can convert to ethanol—about

five tons per acre of corn. And, because you’re turning food crops into fuel, corn ethanol production helps to drive up prices of food, like the cost of tortillas in Mexico. That trade-off is unacceptable. Ethanol may be good in certain drinks, but it isn’t necessarily the best fuel we can conceive of. We make ethanol simply because we know how.

The energy content of ethanol is a lot lower than gasoline,

delivering only .7 times the mileage. Moreover,

the existing fuel distribution infrastructure cannot

be used to store and deliver ethanol. Ethanol has a

high vapor pressure, and because of its high affinity

for water, it readily takes up water and corrodes the

tanks and pipelines that carry oil. Also, ethanol

can only be blended with gasoline up to about 10

percent before car engines need to be modified.

As a result of these problems, and the fact that

ethanol can’t be used to fuel trucks or jets, many

people are interested in alternatives to ethanol. In

fact, alternatives are becoming possible because of

the genetic-engineering revolution. Within the

last 30 years or so, biologists, chemical engineers,

and just about everybody else have become able to

tinker with DNA. Even high-school students do

molecular-biology experiments with kits that can

be ordered from any chemical supply house. We

can engineer bacteria to produce all kinds of molecules,

so we can sit back and ask ourselves, if we

don’t want ethanol, what do we want? What could

be supplied in a biologically friendly and environmentally

friendly fashion? Hydrocarbons that look

like petroleum, of course, would be very nice, but

nobody has demonstrated such a technology that’s

close to being practical yet. One good possibility,

however, is ethanol’s bigger cousin, butanol.

Ethanol has only two carbons while butanol has

four, which makes it more energy-rich. Butanol’s

low water content (it has less affinity for water

than ethanol) and high energy content are right

up there with gasoline. Butanol can be distributed

and stored in existing pipelines and tanks. It burns

cleanly, without any kind of modification to gasoline

engines, and it can be blended with gasoline

at any ratio. Furthermore, you can make other

fuels—gasoline, diesel, or jet fuel—from butanol

using well-known chemical processes. Butanol

was, in fact, one of the most important commercial

fermentation processes in the mid-20th century

Answer 8

alcohols burn like a good fuel as it has gasoline.

Answer 9

Corn is presently being distilled and processed into an alcohol based fuel called Ethanol. Works great in newer cars and with some modifications to the carburator or fuel injectors can even be used in older cars. Ethanol is a bit less expensive than gasoline or diesel fuels and better yet....we don't have to get it from Saudi Arabia or any other country. We grow it right here, but unfortunatley less corn in the marketplace will mean that the price or corn may increase, and the USA has less corn to sell or give to other countries to help eliminate famine worldwide. Politicians are currently debating which use for corn is more important.  

Answer 10

we can use alcohol as fuel but it will damage ur vehicle....

Answer 11

Alcohol keeps some people running...

Answer 12

In Brazil, while the sugarcane is growing in the fields of Sao Paulo state, the plants are consuming CO2 and helping clean the air. And after having extracted the juice from the sugarcane, they burn the rest of the plant ("bagasse") to get the energy to produce the ethanol.

They do not grow sugarcane in the rain forest because the soil there is too poor. The forest feeds itself from the dead leaves that covers the ground.

Answer 13

SOME CHEMICALS OR INGRIDIENTS IN ALCOHOL ARE ALSO IN GASOLINE

Answer 14

Well, first we have to find a lot of alcohol, There's really only way to do this cheaply and efficiently...  and that is, make a lot of old fashioned corn whiskey (aka known as ever clear or white lightning.)

You can look up how that's done later, but the long and short of it is that we need sugar, water, and yeast to make the "mash," a nasty, lower alcohol slurry.  To do this, we use cornmeal and malted corn (corn that's sprouted) for a couple of reasons.  First of all, it's very cheap compared to, say, grapes or barley.  It's a great source of sugars and starches.  We use sprouted corn because it produces enzymes that break the corn starches into additional sugar.

So now we have a sugary mash slurry, and in go the yeast.  They take a few weeks to convert the sugars to alcohol.

Nest step:  Distillation  This is a way of separating the alcohol from the mash, and now we have out 180+ proof moonshine!  After a little more treatment, this resulting product will run in most gasoline engines.

BUT I MUST SAY THIS:  The only good thing alcohol fuel will do is help get us off foreign oil.  It will do NOTHING to reduce global warming (as it's the same reaction as gasoline -- burn a carbon compound to generate heat energy and CO2 exhaust, by far the major greenhouse gas contributing to global warming -- Nothing else comes close.  

AND THEN there is consideration to what this would do to our agriculture energy.  THe price of corn would SKYROCKET.  So would the price of meat and poulty, as about 80% of corn grown in the US is for the sole purpose of Animal Feed.  TO totally break free of foreign oil, we would need 3 times the farmland we have now.

A noble idea, but simple science shows that the cost/benefit analysis is highly skewed towards cosdt (look into the "Carbon Cycle").  Granted, this makes for a politically popular idea, but once people learn the science involved, People will abandon the idea.