Ricardo's Blog

As discussed on the recent post on ethanol “Living on ethanol”, Brasil has had an ethanol program over more than three decades.  The results of the program are impressive: Brasil is the world leader in the production of ethanol and has a nationwide infrastructure to produce, distribute and consumer ethanol on vehicles. 

One could think that for other countries in the Americas building that infrastructure should be a daunting task.  However, it is not such a big problem, since ethanol can be a component of the mix in gasoline.  In Brasil for example, companies like Petrobras have ethanol as 20-25% of their gasoline mix.  Ethanol acts as a substance that helps add oxygen to the gasoline mix and reduces CO₂ emissions.   Adding ethanol to gasoline is therefore a sound ecological practice.

On small percentages of ethanol in the gasoline, the cars don’t need to be modified to use ethanol.  You simply use regular gasoline engines and you don’t need to have Flex cars.  In countries like Mexico and the U.S. the substance used today to oxygenate the gasoline is called MTBE.  MTBE pollutes the environment and therefore, even though it helps gasoline burn better, it does it with a pollution cost.

In Mexico a country which has a very large potential to produce sugar cane, a law to foster bio fuel production is under discussion. This law could mean the conversion of the old sugar mills into ethanol facilities; the old mills are for the most part broken since Mexico produces far more sugar than what is capable of consuming or exporting.  I hope the law passes the senate and finally Mexico starts to develop ethanol production and lower its consumption of oil. 

In a similar fashion to the ethanol-gasoline mix, you can also mix bio diesel with regular diesel.  You can have a percentage of the diesel from vegetable sources simply added to the regular oil-based diesel.  The main challenge to bio diesels in cold weather is that they can turn into a jelly and clog the motors inner ducts.  There are solutions to warm the oil before starting the engine, start the engine with regular diesel or even winter diesels for cold weather.

In any case, the mixing ability of bio diesels can be the key for countries like Mexico or the US to quickly jump into ethanol as a viable oil substitute.  Just mixing 20% of ethanol can save hundreds of thousands of barrels a day.  It is a simple step that is well worth trying.