Why is Ethanol a better fuel than parraffin?

Question

hey

i have a school assignment that i am having trouble with any help would be totally cool

cheers ma dears

Answer 1

Ethanol is better as it is 'green'.  It is made from liquid derived from the Sugar Cane.  The liquid is then heated and the vapour from the heated liquid becomes Ethanol and is used in Brazil, en masse, as an alternative to petrol (or gasoline if you're from North America).

This is a renewable form of fuel and is natural.  I believe that in the future, we will have Ethanol-powered cars.

Answer 2

ethanol is more distilled that paraffin, it is thinner so it ignites a lot easier.

Answer 3

forget Ethanol

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/...

Answer 4

Ethanol is garbage.  It takes over 1700 gallons of water to make 1 gallon of ethanol.  http://climate.weather.com/articles/nebr...

Ethanol is worse on the enviroment because it's evaporative pressure is to high and it's BTU is very low.  Gasoline is over 115,000 and ethanol is under 76,000 BTU.  http://petroleum.berkeley.edu/papers/pat...

http://www.9news.com/rss/article.aspx?st...

It take more energy to make ethanol than it yields.

http://www.energybulletin.net/5062.html

Now this is a much read.  http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=...

Fuel economy is decreased by 24% to 35% less with ethanol.   www.fueleconomy.com

http://www.slate.com/id/2122961/

Do you really want to wow someone?  This is how.  Did you know we 8 times more oil in Colorado,Wyoming, and Utah than all OPEC countries combined.  In those 3 states we have enough oil to supply the world for 500 years.  Want info  can get it to you.   Oil Shale Colorado has a search.

Answer 5

Ethanol is a better fuel because it is clean, renewable, and made in America.  Oil is none of those things.  Ethanol supports American farmers.  Oil supports muslim sheiks who want to kill us.  Ethanol creates jobs here and reduces the federal trade deficit, 50% of which is foreign oil imports.  Ethanol eliminates the possibility of devastating oil spills in the ocean.  Ethanol is non-carcinogenic.  gasoline is highly carcinogenic.  The list goes on and on and on..............

Ethanol is way better for our environment and heres why:

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/...

Answer 6

Look up the structures for each of these fuels. Ethanol burns very cleanly because burning it releases carbon dioxide and water only as by-products. Paraffin is richer in carbon (saturated), so polluting smoke is also a by-product of burning.

Answer 7

There is a problem with this question. Do you mean paraffin wax, which is a compound composed of alkanes (C-20 to C-40) or do you mean paraffins which comprise all alkanes which have the general formula cx/h2x+2?

If you mean the wax, it has a high melting point, which makes it difficult to use as a fuel. If you mean the general term for paraffins, gasoline is largely composed of paraffins, like octane.

Now for the other problem. How do you mean better? At this stage, ethanol is more expensive than gasoline. But is is 100% renewable, being derived from biomass, primarily corn.

So you have paraffin wax - rquires heat(38 degrees to 67 degrees centigrade) to liquify and is not renewable

Paraffins (gasoline, diesel fuel -fuel oil, bunker crude) which is non-renewable and dirty to burn.

Ethanol - burns cleanly, is renewable, but is more expensive.