Full circle - making gasoline out of ethanol

[oilyriser]

http://www.sciencentral.com/video/2008/09/19/green-gasoline/

They have found a way to take 115 octane ethanol and turn it into low octane petroleum fuel, after yet another loss of energy in the conversion process.

 

[wavinwayne]

Like making wood out of paper. Brilliant!!!

 

[Pablo]

That's the kind of jobs I'm talking about!!

 

[Samilcar]

If you read the article, they're skipping over ethanol completely.

It's: corn > sugar > petroleum

Not: corn > sugar > ethanol > petroleum

No conversion loss from ethanol necessary. Interesting, but still not as efficient as simply pumping our existing petroleum straight out of the ground.

 

[oilyriser]

Some people were doing initial testing of catalysts with ethanol, so the idea caught my eye. I'm not totally against ethanol as a fuel. It's nice for Formula 1 racing, where high compression engines can make use of the high octane number. You can also build a vaporizer and inject it into a running diesel engine, and burn it at 40% efficiency. Mixing it with gasoline is a waste.

I'm also toying with the idea of super high octane gasoline, which could be put on the market if the environmental regulations on benzene were relaxed a bit. Oil refineries could be making super high octane gas, using the proper catalysts, but the high aromatic content would not pass strict regulations. The benefit of super high octane is that you can run high compression and make more power with the same amount of gas, for better MPG.

Ethanol to aromatic fuel

But you can probably do that using regular petroleum feeds.

 

[sparkplug]

Brazil is already doing this. It was on the history channel a while ago.