Ethanol it is also known as ethyl alcohol grain alcohol or drinking alcohol. It is a flammable, colorless chemical compound it is used in the manufacture of alcoholic beverages and it is also found in the thermometers in to determine the room temperature of places and it measures the temperature of the bodies of human beings. Ethanol is made from starch, sugarcane crops, maize, sorghums, potatoes, wheat, cornstalks, fruits and vegetable wastes that is fermented and distilled .
Currently ethanol that is being used for industrial purposes is being derived from the by- products of the petroleum refineries. The benefits of ethanol are that it leads to the development of the economy since it is derived from products that are produced locally such as the corn, maize and sugarcanes and this has leads the nation to regarded as an energy independent nation. It was first prepared synthetically in 1826 through the efforts of Mr. Henry Hennel in Great Britain and Mr. Sevullas in France.
Mr. Michael Faraday later prepared the ethanol product through an acid-catalyzed hydration of ethylene in 1828. It was used as a lamp fuel in the United States in the years 1840 although the government opposed the move of manufacturing it because the tax that was levied on the product was considered to be uneconomical. In 1920 there was a rule that was imposed that prohibited the use of ethanol since the sellers of ethanol were being considered to be allies of moon shiners and the this lead to the ethanol fuel suspension for a while in the country .
The characteristics of ethanol are; it is a versatile solvent that can be mixed with water of all types of proportions and other organic solvents including acetic acid, acetones, benzene, carbon tetrachloride, chloroform, diethyl ether, ethylene glycol, glycerol, nitro methane and toluene solutions . It’s miscibility with water decreases as the number of carbons increases. http://gristmill. grist. org/story/2006/1/26/231545/366 Ethanol is classified in to two types’ denatured alcohol and absolute ethanol.
Denatured alcohol is alcohol that is used for human consumption. It is used for preparing alcoholic beverages. Absolute ethanol is a pure ethanol that contains one percent of water and it is not used for the preparation of products that are consumed by the human beings, it often contains trace amounts of the benzene that is used to distill water by isotropic distillation and it is used as a solvent for the lab and industrial settings where water disrupts the desired reactions.
Although pure ethanol has not be approved as a motor vehicle fuel in the United States when compared with gasoline it does not produce poisonous gas emissions such as the carbon monoxides, nitrous oxide and sulphur dioxide and it produces fewer green house gases that cause the global climate change. It also reduces the ground-level ozone formations by lowering the level of the volatile organic compounds and hydrocarbon emissions. http://gristmill. grist. org/story/2006/1/26/231545/366
Ethanol that is produced from corn has energy effects thus it’s developed as an alternative of fossil fuels. It has been reported that the corn ethanol can lead to the reduction of global emissions by 10 to 20 percent in its full lifecycle compared with the gasoline oils this is because the corn production requires a significant small amount of fossil fuels inputs for the farm operations and for the production of fertilizers. The renewable fuels like celluloses ethanol have been noted to help reduce the gasoline gases and the global warming emissions in the state.
The country can save on its oil production cost by using the ethanol fuel because its less harmful to the consumers and its cost effective to the customers since it is locally available since it is produced from corn which is locally grown in the country thus its easy to obtain it. Ethanol is used as a motor fuel and as a fuel additive. The largest national fuel ethanol is based in Brazil. The gasoline fuel that is sold in Brazil contains 20% ethanol and anhydrous ethanol is used as a fuel. The vehicles in Brazil make use of ethanol as a fuel in their vehicles.
The vehicles consist of flex-fuel engines thus they can use ethanol or gasoline as a fuel in their vehicles. Most of the farmers of Brazil grow sugarcane which is fermented and distilled so as to produce ethanol and it is a locally available material thus it is used as a source of fuel and it has a greater concentration of sucrose than corn by about 30% and it is also easier to extract. The gas that is generated from the process is used to produce electricity and is utilized in power plants. The United States fuel ethanol is derived from maize. The grain bio refinery has a capacity of 7 billion gallons that enables it to produce ethanol.
It is blended with gasoline and thus named as gasohol. Recent studies have shown that the production of ethanol consumes more energy than the amount of energy used to generate it, thus the gasoline fuel has been considered to be more economical to use than the ethanol fuel. Other alternative sources of energy such as the cellusic crops as the switch grass, that produces better energy has been established since it more economical to use than the gasoline and the use corn to produce fuel thus there has been a suggestion of displacing the corn as an energy producing fuel.
It has been reported by the environ mentalities that the increased production of ethanol can not meet the energy goals and may damage the environment while at the same time cause the prices of food to increase. A leading Cornell university agricultural expert Mr. David Pimentel stated that the average power that would be used on the United States automobile fuel would be derived from corn that would be grown on an eleven acre of farmland and the same space would be used to grow food for human consumption thus he stated that it would be uneconomical to use the farmland for growing corns which produces less energy.
According to Mr. David Pimentel he found out that an acre of U. S corn yielded about 7110 pounds of corn and it produced 328 gallons of ethanol. The cost of processing and producing ethanol was quite high since in order to produce the corn one was required to use 140 gallons of fossil fuels and in order to meet the expenses of the farm one was required to incur costs of about $347 per acre which was very costly to sustain and maintain the crop.
Ethanol that is produced from corn costs is $1. 74 per gallon as compared to 95 cents per gallon of gasoline that is why people in the United States prefer to use the gasoline fuel because they are cheaper to produce compared to the ethanol fuel products. The growers and processors of ethanol cannot be able to afford to burn ethanol into ethanol thus the U. S drivers cannot afford to maintain to maintain it.
The effects of corn on the environment are that the corn production erodes the soil in the United States by more than twelve times and the water that is needed to irrigate the farm is twenty five faster to use than the natural recharge rate of ground water. The environmental system in which corn is produced has reduced drastically and thus corn has been disregarded as a renewable resource for the ethanol energy production since its cost of output is more than the cost of producing gasoline fuel yet it does not sustain the demand for fuel in the state.
It has also been observed that the prices of commodities in the market place have been inflated because the government has subsidized the prices of ethanol production while as the production cost of the commodity could be used in other better activities such as increasing the cost of producing food crops which are beneficial to the human beings and they it can help to improve to the economic status of the country.
The United States automobile can use on average 852 gallons of the corn based fuel in order to cover a distance of 10,000 miles yet the residents of the state use over eleven acre piece of land to grow the crop yet the same piece of land can be used to grow crops that would be used to feed over seven million Americans thus it would be uneconomical to till the land with corn than grow food crops which are economical to the state.
If all vehicles depended on ethanol ninety seven percent of the population of United States would be covered by the crop yet it would not yield much output in the need this people in U. S would not be able to farm their farms due to inadequate space. The bad effects of ethanol are that it doesn’t burn like he gasoline fuel and it is costly to produce it thus it is uneconomical to use it .
The recent statistics have shown that ethanol production represents over 3. 5 per cent of the gasoline consumption yet it consumes over twenty percent of the entire United States corn crop thus resulting to the doubling of he price of corn and the impact has been a threat of hunger in the third world since an increased acreage has been devoted to for the plantation of corn that produces ethanol yet its income is less than that of the growth of the staple foods (http://www.ucsusa. org/clean-vehicles/fuel-economy/ethnol-frequently).
Reference:
Website http://blogs. cgdev. org/globaldevelopment/2007/03/on-global-warming as accessed on 12th April 12, 2008 Website http://gristmill. grist. org/story/2006/1/26/231545/366 As accessed on 12th April, 2008 Website http://www. ucsusa. org/clean-vehicles/fuel-economy/ethnol-frequently as accessed on 12th April 2008