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December 27, 2006

Fuel Conversion System for Ethanol Powered Cars - ethanol

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From now you don't need to use only gasoline to run your car as there are a lot of different alternative fuels. The choice of alternative fuel sources is larger today than it has ever been before. Take advantage of fuel conversion system and run your cars on ethanol (E85) fuels instead of traditional gasoline.

Rio de Janeiro (PRWEB) November 30, 2006 – Abcesso Technology has launched for the first time outside Brazil their latest fuel conversion system for ethanol power cars. When installed it makes the normal gasoline car behave and perform as a Flex Fuel Vehicle. The system is totally automatic, there is no fuel selection switch, and the management system recognizes the 'lambda probe' signal and automatically adjusts to whichever fuel is being used in any proportion.



Ethanol is a clean-burning, renewable, produced by fermentation. It is a product of sugar metabolism in certain species of yeast in the absence of oxygen. The process of culturing yeast under conditions to produce alcohol is referred to as brewing. Yeasts can grow in the presence of up to only about 14% alcohol, but the concentration of alcohol in the final product can be increased by distillation.

Ethanol contains oxygen that provides a cleaner and more efficient burn of the fuel. When used in ethanol power cars, it reduces carbon dioxide, a major contributor to global warming. Although burning ethanol still releases carbon dioxide during production and combustion.

The use of ethanol blended fuel is very popular in the United States. One of the most popular is E85 fuel a mixture of conventional gasoline and ethanol. The result is a much cleaner burning fuel that is just as efficient as standard fuels. This mixture is optimized for a combination of clean exhaust and efficiency and will function properly in almost any non-diesel car or truck.

So, what is ethanol? [tag-tec]Ethanol[/tag-tec] is ethyl alcohol which needs to be 100% pure. Ethanol is the highest performance fuel on the market and keeps today's high-compression engines running smoothly. Ethanol-blended fuel (such as E85) keeps your fuel system clean, cause it does not leave gummy exhausts.

And because ethanol burns cleaner, it produces fewer emissions. Today, all ethanol cars manufacturers approve the use of ethanol blended fuels and even recommend to use ethanol for its positive environmental impacts.

The use of an ethanol will allow to increase the performance of ethanol cars in general. Initial tests showed that ethanol may also extend from 20 to 80% the engine's maintenance. The conversion of existing engines is not only feasible, but also cost effective.

Be earth friendly and play your part in pollution control by installing fuel conversion products to improve fuel economy. Who allow your fuel efficient car to run using ethanol fuel, gasoline or even mix of both — E85 fuel.

Ethanol

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Ultimate Biodiesel Guide


August 16, 2007

Ethanol scam?


There is a good article in Rolling Stone about ethanol. They examine the whole ethanol policy and agribusiness connections with our politicians. I think it is a good read.

The great danger of confronting peak oil and global warming isn't that we will sit on our collective asses and do nothing while civilization collapses, but that we will plunge after "solutions" that will make our problems even worse. Like believing we can replace gasoline with ethanol, the much-hyped biofuel that we make from corn. Ethanol, of course, is nothing new. American refiners will produce nearly 6 billion gallons of corn ethanol this year, mostly for use as a gasoline additive to make engines burn cleaner. But in June, the Senate all but announced that America's future is going to be powered by [tag-tec]biofuels[/tag-tec], mandating the production of 36 billion gallons of ethanol by 2022. According to ethanol boosters, this is the beginning of a much larger revolution that could entirely replace our 21-million-barrel-a-day oil addiction. Midwest farmers will get rich, the air will be cleaner, the planet will be cooler, and, best of all, we can tell those greedy sheiks to fuck off. As the king of ethanol hype, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, put it recently, "Everything about ethanol is good, good, good."

My feeling is that [tag-ice]ethanol[/tag-ice] is great for a small impact alternative fuel or blended fuel but we sure cannot go the way of turning our corn crops into ethanol and think we are going to save the country from the evil foreign oil.

Rolling Stone's bottom line take:

In the end, the ethanol boom is another manifestation of America's blind faith that technology will solve all our problems.

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April 24, 2008

Ethanol - The True Green Alternative?


With rising oil costs and environmental concerns has come increased pressure on the motor industry to develop an alternative and greener fuel to power the world's vehicles. But would ethanol be a viable alternative to petrol (gas)?

Ethanol is largely seen as an environmentally friendly alternative to petrol. It is made from crops such as sugarcane in Brazil and soyabean in the US, and it is significantly less polluting than petrol because it doesn't produce sulphur dioxide or lead emissions and, importantly, any carbon dioxide produced can be offset by growing more sugarcane. Cars in the UK, for instance, can currently run on about 10 per cent of ethanol in petrol, but the corrosive effect of ethanol means increasing levels above this can damage the engine if the necessary changes have not been made. Recent moves by Brazil to export biofuels to the European market on a bigger scale have increased interest in ethanol as a possible replacement for petrol. Since signing agreements with Sweden and Japan, Brazil is now interested in developing partnerships with British and European companies. In Brazil ethanol is widely available and it makes up around 40 per cent of fuel consumption and powers over 50 per cent of vehicles. Having spent the last 30 years refining the production of ethanol from sugarcane, Brazil has now become the largest producer and exporter of ethanol in the world.

The technology for creating ethanol has been around since the 1920s, but production only took off in Brazil in the 1980s when the government looked around for alternative sources in the wake of the 1970s oil crisis and rising oil prices. During the 1980s more than 75 per cent of all motor vehicles and around 90 per cent of cars were run on ethanol. But a drop in oil prices and an end to government subsidies meant that ethanol lost it's popularity for a while. However, rising oil prices caused the popularity of ethanol to rise again a couple of years ago, and now over 50 per cent of new cars in Brazil are FFVs (Flexible Fuel Vehicles) that can be run on either pure petrol, pure ethanol or a mixture of the two.

Brazilian production of ethanol is set to rise over the next few years. In 2005 they produced 282,000 barrels of ethanol per day and the expectations are for production to rise to 442,000 barrels per day by 2010. Brazil currently exports 7,200 barrels per day to the US (who also produce their own ethanol from soyabeans). This, of course, is still a drop in the ocean compared to overall US gasoline consumption. And the question is whether or not Europe and, particularly, the UK will become a new customer for Brazil's growing biofuels industry.

We wait to see if becomes the true green alternative and, of course, how much governments - particularly in the UK - squeeze out of us by way of tax!!



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January 1, 2007

6 Steps To Making e85 Ethanol At Home - ethanol


6 Steps To make e85 Ethanol

Step One: . . . The Conversion Process

We have to break down carbohydrate sugars, such as the starch from corn. Create it into 'Mash'. Grind or crush the feedstock (corn, soybeans, wheat, etc…). Then dilute and add an enzyme (alpha amylase) to turn the mixture into a liquid. Once liquified a second enzyme is added(glucoamylase) to convert the starch into sugar. (If the source is mainly sugar, i.e…rotten fruit, molasses, etc…, the conversion step can be skipped.

Step Two: . . . Fermentation

Add yeast and make it into a beer (wine) type solution.

Step Three: . . . Distillation

The beer (wine) type solution needs to be run through a still to extract the alcohol from the solution.

Step Four: . . . Filtration

The ethanol now needs to be filtered to get rid of excess organic volatiles.

Step Five: . . . Dehydration

The ethanol needs to be 'dried'. After the distillation process there will be a certain amount of water in the ethanol you have just created - this can be dried running the ethanol through Zeolite a readily available product for drying ethanol.

Step Six: . . . Ethanol Into e85

Now simply convert the pure ethanol into e85 by adding 15% unleaded gasoline to your ethanol. e85 is nothing more than 85% ethanol mixed with 15% gasoline.




Frederick Musser

Frederick Musser is the owner of e85 Tips. A site dedicated to informing the world about e85 and its benefits.

For more information on e85 please visit e85Tips.com

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January 17, 2008

Ethanol Fuel - Mother Nature Needs a Rest, Give Ethanol Fuel a Try


With all of the talk about fast depleting fossil fuels and the ever climbing global temperature, it can be difficult to catch up with the various environmental issues that are coming to the forefront of things at this point in time. Science is finding a way to make up for many of the things that are becoming issues as related to the environment, but with many of these things it is a literal race against time to find a substitute for that which we have become dependent upon. Ethanol fuel serves just that purpose.



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