Bioethanol is a form of
renewable energy that can be produced from agricultural feedstocks. It can be
made from very common crops such as sugar cane, potato, manioc and corn through
fermentation, distillation and dehydration techniques.
Advantages
of Using Ethanol as fuel-
1. Dependence
on imported Oil reduces.
2. increased
domestic ethanol production would also create more jobs
3. Ethanol
burns cleaner than gasoline(petrol) meaning less greenhouse gas emissions are
emitted.
4. Adding
ethanol to gasoline in lower percentages, such as 10 percent ethanol and 90
percent gasoline (E10), reduces carbon monoxide emissions from the gasoline
Disadvantages-
1. Food
security- With higher production of ethanol there will be increased cost of
food prices and food shortages because much of the arable land would be used
for ethanol production instead to produce food.
2. Ethanol
tends to be very corrosive because it can easily absorb water and dirt and
without the proper filtration system ethanol can soon cause the corrosion
inside the engine block.
3. Ethanol
has 34% lower energy per unit volume compared to gasoline, hence greater amount
of ethanol needed to travel the same distance.
Petrol-ethanol
blending in India
In India, a large
proportion of available ethanol comes as a byproduct from cane molasses during
sugar production. Thus
ethanol production is less likely to reduce food security. Instead it
would lead to better returns for sugar cane farmers and consequently better
sugarcane and sugar production. India is the second
largest sugarcane and sugar producer in the world, after Brazil. In Brazil,
blending is mandatory up to 25 per cent of ethanol with petrol.
In January 2003, the
government decides for a 5-percent ethanol blend in gasoline through its
ambitious Ethanol Blending Program (EBP).
The government mandated 5
per cent blending in September 2006; raised the level to 10 per cent in October
2007; and made such blending compulsory in October 2008. Further, in 2008, the
Cabinet approved the National Policy on Biofuel, which envisaged blending of
biofuels with petrol and diesel to a level of 20 per cent by 2017.
The oil marketing
companies have failed to achieve even 5 per cent blending countrywide. Owing
to
1. conflicting views among the Ministries
of Chemicals and Fertilizers, Agriculture, and Petroleum and Natural Gas,
2. the
reluctance of some State governments
to require sugar units to make available adequate quantities of ethanol for the
fuel industry because more lucrative
options offered by the liquor industry for production of industrial and
portable alcohol.
3. the
lack of competent processing
technologies has made cost of production of ethanol comparatively higher.
4. failure to set ethanol pricing formula for
ethanol. The sugar industry and ethanol manufacturers have been supplying
ethanol. For the past 18 months at a provisional price of Rs 27 a litre, though
their alternative products from molasses are fetching Rs 34-35 a litre.
The pricing of ethanol is
complicated by the decontrol of petrol
prices and administered pricing of sugarcane. Given the cyclical nature of sugarcane, a
periodic review of ethanol prices becomes critical. The core issue is the
controversy over the price at which oil companies will procure ethanol from
sugar firms. Since ethanol-blended petrol and fossil fuel-based petrol are
likely to be priced the same at the retail end, blending at the ethanol price
of Rs 27 per litre will result in losses for oil marketing companies.
Import of ethanol
complicates the pricing issue further. Brazil has been the single-largest
source for Indian ethanol imports over the years. A comparison of the delivered
cost of imported ethanol from Brazil and domestic ethanol shows that in recent
months, the cost of imports was higher.
To make sure that sectoral
shortages are kept to the minimum, sufficient investments in ethanol storage
facilities and R&D should be encouraged.
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