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Saturday, June 9, 2007

Butanol: The Next Generation Bio-Fuel


Although the science behind this newly found bio-fuel is not fully complete and ready to implement, butanol leaves us with a hope greater than that of ethanol.
But what is butanol? When speaking of it as a bio-fuel, it is an alchol based fuel that, at 85% strength, can be used without any changes to many engines, unlike ethanol. Butanol fuel is produced from fermentation of biomass. Essentially rotting bio-materials can be converted into butanol.

It’s imagery that causes us to reflect on a mad scientist named Doc Brown from a movie called Back To The Future. We see a frazzled man with interesting sunglasses from the future that was dumping trash into his Delorean engine to produce fuel. Just exclude the aluminum cans and plastics, and keep the banana peels, rotting foods, and plants, and we’re not far from a butanol powered engine.
When compared to ethanol, butanol is less corrosive, more sutable for distrubution through existing gasoline pipe-lines, and has more energy available to burn. Although there are no automobiles in production right now that are ready for butanol, it is concievable that we could see more ink about this new fuel in the near future.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"When speaking of it as a bio-fuel, it is an alchol based fuel that, at 85% strength, can be used without any changes to many engines..."

"Although there are no automobiles in production right now that are ready for butanol..."

If many car engines can use 85% butanol mix fuel without changes, how can it be there are no automobiles ready for an 85% butanol mix fuel?

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