Bioethanol- An alternative fuel for petrol

[anjusct]

                            Our conventional non-renewable energy sources are getting depleted at an alarming rate. It has been estimated that our petroleum reserves will last only for a few more decades. Also the price of petrol & diesel are always soaring up. So it is high time that we looked for some alternative fuels and energy sources.
                           
                  Bio-ethanol is an alternative fuel which can be used to substitute petrol. It can be produced from a number of renewable sources, like from food crops, agricultural wastes, household organic wastes, paper wastes etc. This is a cleaner fuel, i.e. it does not emit large amounts of CO2 and other toxic gases. Also it is very cost effective and is cheaper than petrol.

                  The principle process is to first hydrolyse the food crops to yield sugars from carbohydrates and then fermenting the sugars to yield ethyl alcohol. This ethyl alcohol (ethanol) is then purified by fractional distillation. It is then blended with petrol and used as fuel.

                   Ethanol is a high octane fuel. Octane value of fuel should be higher for higher compression engines. The common blends of fuel are 10% ethanol and 90% petrol (E10).Vehicles don't require any modification to run on E10 and also their warranties are unaffected. But only flexible vehicles can run on fuel blends with 85% ethanol & 15% petrol (E 85).   

                   A number of researches are going on in developed nations to develop and use this new fuel effectively. Extensive research is on going especially in UK and USA.

[sajiv]

Nice survey about petrol,when this resarch gets over

Anju,also add 3 min tags for views by other users