Biofuel

Ethanol has been around for as long as people have known how to make liquor from corn, otherwise known as moonshine. It’s a simple process of removing sugars from plants and letting the fermentation process change it into alcohol. That’s it in a nutshell. Obviously there’s a bit more at each stage of the process.

In the U.S. corn leads the way in making ethanol, in Brazil it’s sugarcane. A great amount of research is being given to the production of cellulosic ethanol using feedstock like switchgrass. Still, ethanol is not available in all parts of the country, yet. While corn ethanol is being produced in significant amounts producers only produced only about 4 percent of the U.S. gasoline used in 2006.

Automakers, including Ford, Chevrolet and Chrysler, are finally jumping on the bandwagon producing flex-fuel vehicles that are capable of running on E85, a blend of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. Unfortunately because of the lack of infrastructure to provide ethanol it means that most flex-fuel vehicles are run on ethanol blends only about 1% of the time. We’ve got a long way to go and it’s going to take everyone’s support to see the needed changes happen.