Properties and use of bioethanol fuel

How bioethanol helps reduce CO₂ emissions

During their growth phase, plants absorb CO₂ from the air (via photosynthesis with the aid of solar energy) and produce organic matter from the carbon (C) present in CO₂. That’s what makes plants grow! During the process of converting the plant into ethanol, most of the carbon is turned into alcohol. This carbon is then burned during fuel combustion in a vehicle’s engine (carbon in fact contains energy). Combustion leads to the emission of CO₂ through the exhaust pipe.

This CO₂ will once again be fixed by a plant and the process begins again as the CO₂ is recycled. This is not the case with oil consumption, because it is not derived from living plants. With oil, we release large quantities of CO₂ that have been stocked for millions of years in the ground.

Ethanol is easy to use

In terms of distribution, bioethanol has two big advantages:

• it can be blended with petrol in varying proportions
• it is simple to use; no alterations are needed to vehicle engines or fuel systems as long as the proportion of bioethanol/petrol is not greater than 15%.

Standardised blends

There are several petrol/ethanol blends on the market. The standard in effect today for all petrol vehicles authorises a blend of 5% ethanol (essEnce5). This limit should soon be raised to 10%, following a European Commission proposal in February 2007. At the same time, the use of a high-ethanol fuel (85%) is rapidly being developed. However, in the case of this new product - Ethanol85 - vehicles will require minor alterations. Flexible fuel or flex-fuel vehicles, (FFV) can run on an ethanol blend of between 0% and 85%.