Brazil gasohol

Starting in the city of Sao Paulo in 1977, and extending to the entire state of Sao Paulo in 1978, a gasohol incorporating 20% ethanol was mandated. Brazil s National Alcohol Program (Proalcool) set an initial goal of providing the 20% fuel mixture nationwide by 1980—1981 and a system of special tax, warranty, and price considerations were enacted to advance the aims of Proalcool. 

Much attention has been devoted in the professional journals and in the press to gasohol, and announcements of new ethanol plants and process improvements seem unending. A perspective on the problems and promise of gasohol is covered along with a status report on work in Brazil on (fuel) methanol from wood, not by destructive distillation used in the past, but by modern synthetic chemistry. Other promising new uses for... 

A few other comments Ethanol is listed by OSHA as a suspect but unproved carcinogen, but OSHA does not have jurisdiction over beverage alcohol, nor, since it is a natural product, does the Delaney Amendment apply. This could lead to paradoxical situations. Ethanol will continue to grow explosively in volume in the next few years as a motor fuel indeed, this has happened in Brazil. The field is extremely volatile, and new developments occur every week, particularly with respect to fermentation and gasohol. Things should be clearer in about five years, and we should remind ourselves to take a similar look at ethanol then. 

Car engines can burn pure alcohol or gasohol, an alcohol-gasoline mixture (10% ethanol in gasoline), with little modification. Gasohol is now widely available in the United States. The use of pure alcohol as a motor fuel is not feasible in most of the United States because it does not vaporize easily when temperatures are low. However, pure ethanol could be a very practical fuel in warm climates. For example, in Brazil large quantities of ethanol fuel are produced for cars. 

Pure bioethanol (ElOO-fuel) is the most produced biofuel, mainly in Brazil and the USA. More widespread practice has been to add up to 20% to gasoline by volume (E20-fuel or gasohol) to avoid the need of engine modifications. Nearly pure bioethanol is used for new "versatile fuel vehicles." (E80-fuel only has 20% gasoline, mainly as a denaturaliser.) Anhydrous ethanol (<0.6% water) is required for gasoline mixtures, whereas for use-alone up to 10% water can be accepted. 

In 2005, 10,500 million liters (2,790 million gallons) of ethyl alcohol were produced by fermentation methods. Of that amount, 92 percent was used as a fuel or an additive in fuels. Many experts suggest that consumers use a mixture of gasoline (90 percent) and ethyl alcohol (10 percent) called gasohol as a vehicle fuel because it burns more completely and releases fewer harmful byproducts to the environment. Although gasohol has not yet become very popular in the United States, it is widely used in some other parts of the world, most notably, in Brazil. 

For several years some countries, such as Brazil, have combined ethanol with gasoline to produce a fuel for cars known as gasohol. This makes a country less dependent on the supply of gasoline but, weight for weight, gasohol is not as efficient in terms of energy production. 

Gasohol boosts octane rating and reduces emissions of carbon monoxide. From a resource viewpoint, because of its photosynthetic origin, alcohol may be considered a renewable resource rather than a depletable fossil fuel. Ethanol is most commonly produced biochemically by fermentation of carbohydrates. Brazil, a country that produces copious amounts of fermentable sugar from sugarcane, has been a leader in the manufacture of ethanol for fuel uses, with an annual production rate of about 24 billion liters. However, due to sugarcane crop shortfalls in 2009-2010, Brazil actually had to import some ethanol from the United States in early 2011 to make up for a deficiency in this fuel. 

All this leads to the following outlook Ethanol as a major fuel is presently not under consideration and will not be in the near future. For the Gasohol project in the USA today, ethanol is seen as an anti-knock-ing additive, which might be of interest as a substitute for methyl-tertiary butyl ether (MBTE), which is already expected to eventually cause ecological problems. In Brazil, there is some tendency to reduce alcohol production for economical and ecological reasons, but social considerations and the investment in 100% alcohol-fueled cars (once subsidized by government) do not allow a fast termination. 

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