Adding Ethanol in Fuel

[narasimha raju]

There is a news published in the local news paper stating that government of
India is planning to add 5% of Ethanol (biproduct of sugar) in fuel in 9 states i.e Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Goa, Maharastra, Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Punjab and Haryana where sugarcane is largely cultivated.

My question is, will this effect the engine life or performance of a vehicle?

[jeetu4444]

i dont think it will effect the performance of the car.i read the review of using this fuel in a bike and it was not having any problems.

[DCEite]

thank god Delhi is not in the list...

[Mpower]

Its a common practice in the US to use 'upto' 5%.

[zaphod]

I thought this was already being done....5-95 ethanol/petrol mix....

your car manual will have the details - IIRC my esteem handbook mentions 10% as safe with no mods.

Brazil is one place where gasohol is big - they use methanol though.

I think's it's a good trend - replacing valuable and hard to obtain fossil fuel with a renewable and cleaner source of biofuel is the way to the future.

zaphod

[mithun]

What are the advantages of mixing Ethanol with petrol ?

Is it to reduce the pollution ? And will it increase the FE in way ?

Will it cause any damage to the engines (especially MPFI) in the long run ?

I know that helping the sugarcane farmers is the need of the hour but at the expense of others is a strict no-no..

[sivadas]

In Brazil they use 100% ethanol (also) for vehicles. And of course engines are different. They are called "Flexi fuel" engines, that means it can run on regular petrol as well as alcohol. Even in US these vehicles are available.

It will be really interesting if that comes here. Guys will be out there with extended straws queuing up at parking lots.

[kpzen]

The basic objective of adding ethanol is reduce dependence on petroleum which is not renewable....Data from sources reveal no difference in performance n FE..
Ethanol is our own product n can be regenerated by sugar industry.....

[aakash-agarwal]

This Is similar to the bio- diesel project headed by Daimler Chrysler India....extracting Diesel from Jatropha oil...

[Klaus17]

I believe they already allow Ethanol addition of upto 5% and will now be pushing it up to the 10% mark. Ethanol also goes into other oil related industries but its under a strict quota system and its difficult to get licenses to it since ethanol is one of the main ingredients in the liquor manufaturing industries. There is always the possibility of ethanol ending up in many of these illegal liquor manufacturing units.

does anyone remember many years ago this guy surfaced (i think his name was ramar pillai) who claimed he had made diesel from the leaves of some tree. he turned out to be a hoax. Many years later now jatropha surfaces.

In brazil and argentina and now recently in south africa they do make biodiesel from genetically modified soya oil.

[bigman]

Great idea but the purchasing process needs to be sorted out if things are to move forward. The Brazillians have got everything down to a T.

I come from an area where sugar cane used to be farmed on a large scale. The farmers got fed up with the sugar mills not paying money for crops on time and all the other bother they used to have like having to queue for days to unload your trolley of cane.

In Haryana the INLD chief Chataula (then CM of Haryana) politicised the whole thing by trying to set up a sugar mill on his home patch (an area which is unsuitable for sugar cane farming). The locals had enough and ploughed up their sugar cane crop.

There appears to be no momentum to empower consumers and spread the use of alternative fuels. Maybe the central government is scared that if cheaper alternatives are introduced then it will lose revenue.

For those interested the following site has some good information http://www.jatrophaworld.org/14.html

[condor]

http://in.rediff.com/money/2006/oct/18fuel.htm

"Owners of old vehicles, especially two-wheelers, using carburettors will have to fork out anything between Rs 2,000 and Rs 10,000 to modify their vehicles for using petrol blended with 10 per cent ethanol that the government has decided to introduce from November 2007."