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ASTM International Offers New Interlaboratory Crosscheck Program for Fuel-grade Ethanol |
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Come join us at these upcoming events: June 3-6 June 3-6 June 3 - 6 June 18-21 July 22-25 July 22-26 |
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The Ethanol Boom
“You’ve got people that are interested in ethanol or biofuels in general because of energy security… There’s also the idea that the biofuels could be a tool to combat greenhouse emissions. Then there’s the whole agricultural support angle… And the automakers are interested in it because they are under pressure to reduce petroleum use. So there’s sort of a real overlap of interest that is boosting biofuels,” says Brady, a director on CERA’s Global Oil research team and a lead author of CERA’s new study, Gasoline and the American People. One big impetus behind the growing use of ethanol in the United States was passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which calls for increasing use of biofuels. The target for this year is 4.7 billion gallons, but by 2012 it will be 7.5 billion gallons. While some envision a future in which ethanol is used as a primary fuel, most ethanol being consumed today in the United States is as a gasoline additive. It’s used to create E10, a blend of 10 percent ethanol and 90 percent unleaded gasoline. “Our industry [the petroleum industry] is the biggest purchaser of ethanol,” says Al Mannato, fuels issues manager for the American Petroleum Institute (API). He goes on to say, “We see ethanol as an important additive.” So why isn’t more ethanol being used as a primary fuel? Brady believes part of the relative lack of interest in E85—a blend of approximately 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline that’s considered to be an alternative fuel—has to do with the cost/performance tradeoff offered by ethanol. While being priced approximately the same as gasoline (after applying the 51 cent-per-gallon tax credit), ethanol only provides 70 percent of the energy offered by gasoline. “If you have an E85 flex-fuel vehicle, and you filled it up, you would only go roughly 80 percent as far as you would go on a gallon of gasoline. So if you were a consumer, you would only want to pay presumably 80 percent of the price of gasoline and ethanol is not priced that way yet,” says Brady. In addition, he says many consumers may be put off by the fact that less energy capacity means they would have to fill up their cars with E85 more often. “So there’s kind of an open question about how receptive consumers would be to ethanol as an alternative fuel. But the path of least resistance in the U.S. is just to blend it into conventional gasoline at low-level blends.” Fuel station operators who carry E85 also must adjust how they handle the fuel. Because materials used to store and dispense gasoline may not always be compatible with high-level alcohol blends such as E85, it is important that operators become fully acquainted with all of E85’s unique needs. For this reason, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory has published Handbook for Handling, Storing, and Dispensing E85. The handbook also discusses E85 standards and specifications, such as the fuel specification ethanol developed by the American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM), ASTM D5798-99. A new proposal by the Bush administration that presents a target of 35 billion gallons of renewable and alternative fuels use by 2017, however, is already pushing the petroleum and auto industries into exploring the possibility of using higher blends in non-flex-fuel cars. Mannato points to studies being performed that are examining the viability of widespread E20 use. “The Coordinating Research Council, which is funded by the oil and auto industries, is already doing some E20 testing on regular cars to determine if E20 would be compatible with the existing vehicle fleet,” he says. Determining how to best use ethanol is not the only challenge the biofuel faces. Another considerable problem it must surmount has to do with distribution. Because ethanol can absorb the small amounts of water that are present in most pipelines, it is difficult to ship via pipelines and must instead by transported using trains, barges or trucks. Since this isn’t the most efficient way to move liquid fuels, organizations such as the API Pipeline Committee are examining the potential of using pipelines for ethanol transit. Until that possibility becomes reality, however, distribution may continue to be an issue that at least partially hinders more widespread ethanol use.
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Inverness Way East • Englewood, CO 80112-5776 • USA |
There’s no question about it—ethanol usage is booming. The biofuel, which has been produced since the 19th century, is suddenly big business, thanks to what Aaron Brady of CERA, an IHS company, describes as a “perfect storm of overlapping themes.”