Ethanol Fuel

Missing Figures

Ethanol

Abstract:

As of now we drive cars almost everywhere from home to the local store or different states. According to www.wikipedia.com there is “an estimated 243,023,485 registered passenger vehicles in the United States according to a 2004 DOT study!” 1That is a lot of cars. In a year the US alone consumes around 146 billion gallons of gasoline that is a huge amount. 2 According to figure 1 about 86% of all world energy comes from oil, gasoline, and coal; this leaves a tiny 14% to be divided among the other natural resources we could harness. Of that 14% of natural resources 9% are where ethanol falls and of that 9% only 12% is from biofuel. This means almost less than 0.3% of all our natural resources come from ethanol. Ethanol is already used in car gasoline as mixture, which most cars use and it is about 10% ethanol giving the name E10.3 This is helping us conserver our oil, gas, and coal resources so if we can further study in that field we will have a better future.

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Introduction:

One of the most common sources ethanol is made from is corn. Some other sources come from “sugar cane, bagasse, miscanthus, sugar beet, sorghum, grain sorghum, switchgrass, barley, hemp, kenaf, potatoes, sweet potatoes, cassava, sunflower, fruit, molasses, corn, stover, grain, wheat, straw, cotton”3 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel) Ethanol is noticed in chemistry by an oxygen and a hydrogen bonded to almost anything (example show in figure 3). Ethanol is colorless and flammable as well as being the alcohol in alcoholic drinks.4 Ethanol can be produced as a petrochemical, a chemical product from raw materials of petroleum, by hydrating ethylene, double bonded C2H4. 4, 5, 6 The other way ethanol can be created is biologically by fermenting, an energy production processes requiring no oxygen, sugars with yeast.7

Ethanol

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Ethanol is made up of easy to obtain resources, corn, and it is easy to make; this is showing that gasoline will be competition in the future.3 Currently in Brazil ethanol provides 18% of he country’s automobile fuel from just sugar cane. 3 About 99% of US produced ethanol is used to create E10, which is a mixture of gasoline and ethanol. In short ethanol can possibly play a more important role in the automobile industry. Advantages and Disadvantages: In figure 4 you can compare both the combustion of gasoline and ethanol gasoline consumes more oxygen and releases more carbon dioxide than ethanol.