Ethanol as an alternative to fuel

It will not be long before the fossil fuels run out, so alternatives are being actively sought. A possible alternative is ethanol (better known as alcohol). Ethanol is one of the biofuels, which means that it is made from biomass.

Ethanol is a fuel that can be obtained from sugar-rich crops such as cane. The sugar is extracted from these crops, which they then ferment. Ethanol is created from this. As soon as the surplus of water is removed from the ethanol, it can be mixed with normal petrol. You can mix ethanol with gasoline in many different proportions, but the most common is: 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline.

A big advantage of using ethanol is that it has no net CO2 emissions. The cultivation of crops for the production of ethanol takes up the amount of CO2 emitted during its combustion. As a result, ethanol is CO2 neutral.

Furthermore, ethanol is not much more expensive than normal petrol. The prices of ethanol and petrol are approximately the same per liter. The disadvantage is that you get less on a liter of ethanol than on a liter of gasoline. This makes you slightly more expensive with ethanol if you look at the price per kilometer.

To replace petrol with ethanol, much more sugar crops must be produced. It will be difficult to find enough space for all these crops. Another drawback is that these plants extract a lot of nutrients from the soil, making the soil nutrient-poor.

Much research remains to be done on ethanol before it can be a suitable replacement for gasoline. It is not yet possible to run cars only on ethanol. The ethanol must be mixed with gasoline to prevent the engine from wearing out too quickly. Furthermore, many cars that run on ethanol have trouble starting when it is cold. Simon: When looking at the information we got, ethanol won’t be a good replacement for fossil fuels.

We consume much more fuel then we will ever be able to make with ethanol. This means there will be a shortage in fuels. Ethanol also isn’t optimized enough to replace gasoline. Much research will have to be done and eventually we will run out of fossil fuels before we can even use ethanol. There may be some benefits to the use of ethanol, but the disadvantages just make it impossible to use it.