Fascinating Facts

Useful Facts about Bio-Ethanol

Bio-ethanol is not the only biofuel around but we do know a lot about it and it is available now. EEMS is demonstrating that it works well in racing cars with neutral or positive effect on performance. In fact, bio-ethanol can have a performance advantage, as it has more oxygen and gives more power for its energy, burns more cleanly and does not need the nasty harmful additives we have in unleaded petrol. It is an alcohol fuel, distilled from bio-mass such as crop waste, as well as from wheat, sugar beet or potatoes.
E85 is sold for flex-fuel vehicles. It is a blend of 85% bio-ethanol and 15% petrol. Bio-ethanol (ethanol in the USA) is an alcohol fuel, and they were around before we discovered oil. Morrisons launched its own E85 at it supermarket forecourts in 2006.
You can make 3000 litres of bio-ethanol fuel from ONE hectare (just over two acres) of STRAW, left over after a crop of wheat or barley. Farmers are not allowed to burn straw any more so they are only too happy to find a new use for it.
That’s enough to run twenty BTCC cars for a whole race weekend ... including practice sessions and three races.
The new production processes being developed now will convert the same amount of straw into even more fuel – and if you use sugar cane this could be up to 9000 litres per hectare, three times as much.
When the better ‘cellulosic’ production methods are used, bio-ethanol fuel will give a 90% reduction in the ‘carbon footprint’ (amount of emissions) compared to running on petrol. And the fuel is also used to produce HYDROGEN, which many scientists say is the energy of the future. (At the moment it’s complex to produce it).
With bio-diesel, oil seed rape can produce 1000 litres a hectare, which would give the same energy as 1000 litres of diesel. But you need six times as much land to produce the same amount of energy for bio-diesel than for bio-ethanol.
At the moment, two bio-ethanol production plants are being developed in the UK. One may produce both bio-ethanol and bio-butanol, another alcohol fuel.

What runs on Bio-Ethanol now then?

Morrisons opened the first UK bio-ethanol E85 filling pump in March 2006 coinciding with the first deliveries of the Saab 9-5 BioPower flex-fuel car. Morrisons has 274 petrol forecourts across the UK and will sell E85 at four outlets in East Anglia and five outlets in Somerset, where the police are running Flexi Fuel Ford Focus cars.
The 9-5 Saab, which can sense what fuel it has, gains 20% BHP and 16% torque when running on E85 compared to regular unleaded petrol. On E85, the fossil emissions of the Saab 9-5 are typically 50-70% cleaner than when running on petrol. (Source: www.saab.co.uk)
Renewables East, the public-funded renewable energy agency for the East of England, project that developing this biofuel market has the opportunity to create and secure up to 10,000 jobs in agriculture and fuel production in the UK.

Around the World

50% of ALL cars sold in Brazil are FLEX FUEL VEHICLES (FFVs)– that’s over three quarters of a million vehicles a year. Even though bio-ethanol is only 25% of Brazil’s energy.
Ford and GM are both (independently) actively involved to increase public awareness of bio-ethanol and to increase the availability of E85 in the USA. GM is spending ‘tens of millions of dollars’ on ethanol campaigning.
Ford will produce 250,000 FFVs in the USA in 2006, and is also committed to sell FFVs in Canada, Europe, Brazil and Thailand.
4.5 million flexi fuel vehicles have been sold by General Motors.
GM has eight model lines which are FFVs, 1.3 million FFVs on the road and will build a further 400,000 in 2006.
Saab has six FFV production lines in Brazil and has recently launched the 9-5 as an FFV in Sweden. Daimler Chrysler has five FFV model lines in the USA. Renault is active with ethanol and has one model line in Brazil, VAG has five lines in Brazil. Volvo has two FFV models.
In Thailand, sales of GASAHOL which is 10% ethanol and 90% petrol, have QUADRUPLED from 2004 to 2005.
In the USA, E85 fuel is cheaper than petrol – it’s the tax that changes the prices.