1. Ethanol Fun facts and what youNeed to Know

2. What is Ethanol? H H H H C C O H H Properties Appearance Colourless liquid - volatile and flammable Melting Point -114.3C Boiling Point 78.4C Solubility in water Fully miscible 3. Think

How many uses of ethanol can you think of?

4. Uses ofEthanol? 5. ...and been used as a fuel since 1908! 6. Where does ethanol come from? Yeast acts on glucose sourced from plant matter such as sugar or corn to produce ethanol. This is a renewable energy source that is carbon neutral. Some are worried about food being diverted into fuel, raising world food prices. Fermentation Steam, high temperature and a catalyst turns ethene into ethanol with no by products. Ethene is made from cracking longer carbonchains found in fossil fuels. So this process is non-renewable.From Ethene 7. Cracking

An ideal fuel would flow and ignite easily but oil mined out of the earth often has very long carbon chains and these are viscous (slow flowing) and hard to ignite.

Cracking is a chemical process, by which these chains are shortened to make a more useful fuel.

8. Cracking - example + hexane butane ethene C C C C C C H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H C C H C C C C H H H H H H H H H 9. Ethanol Production from Oil 5 parts Ethene is added to3 parts water Chemical Reaction 300 C60-70 atm Phosphoric(V) acid catalyst Un-reacted gases recycled Cooling the mixture causes the ethanol to dropout as a liquid Pure Ethanol Long chain hydrocarbons from fossil fuels are cracked and distilled to make ethene 10. Fermentation Carbohydrate e.g. glucose C 6 H 12 O 6 Ethanol+ Carbon Dioxide Yeast 2C 2 H 5 OH + 2CO 2 11. Fermentation But wait!Isnt Carbon Dioxide a Greenhouse Gas?We just said that this process was Carbon Neutral! Yes, but we must think about the whole carbon cycle.The carbohydrate will have originally been made by photosynthesis by the plant, which would have removed exactly the same amount of CO2 from the atmosphere.GlucoseEthanol+ Carbon Dioxide Yeast C 6 H 12 O 6 2C 2 H 5 OH + 2CO 2 12. Where does the carbohydrate come from? High-input annual grass, mostly grown in the USA and is subsidized around $1.90 a gallon [1]. Output from one hectare:31003900 Litres 1020% Greenhouse-gas savings versus petrol Production in 2007: 6,000 Million gallons Long-season annual grass, grown in tropical and subtropical climates.Output from one hectare:53006500 Litres 8796% Greenhouse-gas savings versus petrol Production in 2007: 5,000 Million gallons Instead of growing a crop specially for fermentation, organic waste products can be diverted from landfills.This prevents large amounts of landfill methane production. Methane has 70x the warming effect of CO2. [2] Limited total market. Corn Sugar Cane Waste Biomass A B C [1] http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10250420[2]2007 IPCC AR4Other statistics from Nature 444 (December 7, 2006): 673-676. 13. Ethanol from Corn Fermentation The Food versus Fuel Debate

The amount of corn it takes to fill a large fuel tank with ethanol would feed one person for a year![1]

In 2007, biofuels consumed one third of America's corn (maize) harvest.

In April 2008 the World Bank attributed a 75% increase in world food prices to biofuel production.[2]

[1] Economist 2007[2]April 2008 World Bank 14. Why is Sugar cane not aclear winner then?

De-forestation of rainforest releases CO2.

Brazil currently grows biofuel on former rainforest land the size of UK. Last year Brazil reclassified an additional 200million hectares of land for biofuels

Replanting 1 hectare of forest removes 175 cubic tons of carbon from the atmosphere compared to a maximum saving of 65 tons when bio-ethanol replaces fossil fuels.

Ref: Science magazine article: Forests could absorb up to nine times more CO 2than the production of biofuels can achieve on the same area of land.

15. V Weighing the Benefits 16. V With higher oil prices or extra ethanol subsidies Weighing the Benefits 17. Ethanol: A fuel for the 21 stCentuary? National Geographic estimated that oil production will peak soon and run out by 2060. Oil prices reached $147 per barrel in July 2008 compared to$24 per barrel in the 90s.Hence the world is looking for cheaper energy. The IPCC estimates a 2-3 temperature rise by 2100.This will have massive impact on ecosystems and global climate.CO2 increases this warming. 18. What is the UKs Policy on Biofuels?

Generally the British Government is less pro-biofuel than it once was, due to the environmental and food concerns.

Instead it is lifting fuel standards, by 2012 10% of all new carswill emit less than 100g/Kg CO 2.

However the UK is still researching some biofuels and the first sugar-beet fuelled ethanol production facility opened in 2007 using surplus UK sugar.

19. Think

Imagine you are leaving a bathroom and you have the choice of using a paper towel, a hand drier, or a linen cloth to dry your hands.

Make a list of the information you need to decide which drying method has the least full lifecycle of CO2 emissions.

Find as much of the information as you can and make reasonable guesses for the rest.

20. More to Explore

Headlight blog- http://www.headlightblog.com/2008/04/epiblog-only-sold-in-black-but-you-might-call-it-green/

Verenium-http://www.verenium.com/Pages/Biofuels/BiofuelsEtoh.html

Business Week-http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may2006/tc20060519_225336.htm

Clean Air Trust-http://www.cleanairtrust.org/E85-Chemical-Properties-Production.html

BBC-http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/science/aqa/oils/polymersrev1.shtml