Potential Problems With The Use of Butanol Fuel
The potential problems with the use of butanol are similar to those of ethanol:
- To match the combustion characteristics of gasoline, the utilization of butanol fuel as a substitute for gasoline requires fuel-flow increases (though butanol has only slightly less energy than gasoline, so the fuel-flow increase required is only minimal, maybe 10%, compared to 40% for ethanol.)
- Alcohol-based fuels are not compatible with some fuel system components.
- Alcohol fuels may cause erroneous gas gauge readings in vehicles with capacitance fuel level gauging.
- While ethanol and methanol have lower energy densities than butanol, their higher octane number allows for greater compression ratio and efficiency. Higher combustion engine efficiency allows for lesser greenhouse gas emissions per unit motive energy extracted.
- Butanol is one of many side products produced from current fermentation technologies; as a consequnece, current fermentation technologies allow for very low yields of pure extracted butanol. When compared to ethanol, butanol is more fuel efficient as a fuel alternative, but ethanol can be produced at a much lower cost and with much greater yields.
- Butanol is toxic at a rate of 20g per liter and may need to undergo Tier 1 and Tier 2 health effects testing before being permitted as a primary fuel by the EPA.
Read more about this topic: Butanol Fuel
Famous quotes containing the words potential, problems and/or fuel:
“Children are potentially free and their life directly embodies nothing save potential freedom. Consequently they are not things and cannot be the property either of their parents or others.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“The problems of all of humanity can only be solved by all of humanity.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)
“I had an old axe which nobody claimed, with which by spells in winter days, on the sunny side of the house, I played about the stumps which I had got out of my bean-field. As my driver prophesied when I was plowing, they warmed me twice,—once while I was splitting them, and again when they were on the fire, so that no fuel could give out more heat. As for the axe,... if it was dull, it was at least hung true.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)