Posted on April 21st, 2008 by admin

The continuity of using fossil fuel bring up - at least two serious problems: (1) the economic factor, regarding to the availability of the fossil fuel for several forthcoming decades, the problem of the supply, the price, and the fluctuation, (2) pollution to the environment, resulted from burning emissions of the fossil fuel.

Pollution caused by the fossil fuel have directly & indirectly impact to our health.The direct pollution caused by the forming of dangerous gases, like CO, NOx, and UHC (unburned hydrocarbon), and also metallic element like Lead (Pb). The indirect pollution is due to the forming of CO2 molecules that causing global warming.

It is ethanol, one of the alternative fuels that we must be considers. Ethanol as biofuel can be made from many feedstock trees (that’s why many people also call it as bioethanol) like sugar cane, bagasse, miscanthus, sugar beet, sorghum, grain sorghum, switchgrass, barley, hemp, kenaf, potatoes, sweet potatoes, cassava, sunflower, fruit, molasses, corn, stover, grain, wheat, straw, cotton, other biomass, as well as many types of cellulose waste and harvestings.

Ethanol which is theoretically has the higher octane number than gasoline is suitable to substitute or whole application to the gasoline-powered engines. The highly octane number of ethanol enabled the use of high compression ratio in auto machine. Yuksel et al (2004) claimed that a bioethanol-powered engine has higher efficiency than that of gasoline-powered engine. For the maximum result, ratio of the mixture ethanol: gasoline reached 60:40 lead to efficiency increasing to 10 times.

Bioethanol-powered engine emits only low level of CO, NOx and UHC compared to gasoline-powered one. The use of bioethanol fuel does not create a considered amount of CO2 to the environment. For you know, our gasoline produced by Pertamina is still containing Tetra Ethyl Lead (0.3 g/L) as well as sulfur. The use of bioethanol is obviously better than the fossil fuel. Go Green, Save the World Earth!

Tags: bioethanol fuel, dangerous gases, ethanol-powered engines, fossil fuel, global warming, octane number, pollution, TEL