How do we improve on ethanol?

There is a really interesting article in The Economist called:

Ethanol, schmethanol

The problem with ethanol is that it has a lot of problems as a fuel: It absorbs water (and therefore can cause corrosion), it contains significantly less energy per gallon compared to gasoline, etc. The article therefore asks a good question: “So why is ethanol suddenly back in fashion? That is the question many biotechnologists in America have recently asked themselves. The obvious answer is that, being derived from plants, ethanol is “green”. The carbon dioxide produced by burning it was recently in the atmosphere. Putting that CO2 back into the air can therefore have no adverse effect on the climate. But although that is true, the real reason ethanol has become the preferred green substitute for petrol is that people know how to make it—that, and the subsidies now available to America’s maize farmers to produce the necessary feedstock. Yet such things do not stop ethanol from being a lousy fuel. To solve that, the biotechnologists argue, you need to make a better fuel that is equally green. Which is what they are trying to do.”

The article then goes on to discuss and explain several green alternatives to ethanol that would be better fuels:

• biobutanol
• octanol
• biopetrol
• isoprenoids
• fatty acids
• biocrude

If you are interested in learning about a range of biofuels, it is an interesting article to use as a starting point.

See also: How AC FOX works