Butanol or Ethanol: Bio-Fuel to the Rescue?

Ethanol is the bio-fuel everybody knows about. It is blended with gasoline at a 10% ratio. It is made from Corn and Soybeans which was shown when prices of oil went up, last summer; the price of corn went up too. A lot of the corn was diverted from food use to fuel use thus increased the price and making corn scarce. Also Ethanol is hard to store it corrodes storage containers it is put in.

Butanol though, is non corrosive, which means it can use most of the transportation and storage containers for gasoline. It is harder on the microbes that produce Butanol though then Ethanol so scientists are hard at work trying to make hardier microbes. In the end, though, Butanol can be mixed into gasoline at higher blends saving more gasoline.

For all those news junkies who follow the process of bio-fuels we are always told there is not enough growing land in the United States to grow the plants that will then be turned into fuel for our cars. Even if you added switch grass and cellulose rich plants and find a way to break down their structures you just can’t make enough fuel for the whole US. But if car manufacturers build hybrids which will reduce the need to stopping at a gas station and refilling well all o this reduces the need for gasoline and brings down the price. Even if the price of oil is and you refill less it adds to the fact that demand would be reduced and oil supply would be saved from 50 years left to maybe double that.

But will it save us from our dependence on oil? No. But Ethanol and Butanol could be one of the technologies that help us get there.