Another Corn Fuel
According to this website, there is another fuel that can be made from corn – butanol. These folks – Environmental Energy, Inc. – claim to have run cross country last year on 100 percent butanol, getting 24 miles to the gallon with no engine modifications.
Why have we never heard of it? According to the website, production of butanol from corn and other biomass has been stymied by the lack of technology to make it economically viable. The problem has been historically low yields and low concentrations of butanol compared to those of ethanol….EEI’s patent changes everything. We are now able to produce yields of 2.5 gallons of butanol per bushel of corn.
If this has real potential, these guys need a better PR engine to make it work and need to get support from the corn growers.
Thanks to Gary Dikkers for pointing me to the website.
1 Comment »
Gary Dikkers
Butyl alcohol could be the alcohol fuel of the future if the EEI process works as they say. Butanol has several advantages over ethanol:
* It contains almost as many Btu per gallon as gasoline. (Butanol has 110,000 Btu/gal. Gasoline 115,000 Btu/gal. Ethanol has 84,000 Btu/gal.)
* Gasoline engines can burn it in any ratio mixed with gasoline without modification to the engine.
* It doesn’t mix with water as ethanol does. That means it can be shipped through pipelines. It also means distillation is much less energy intensive or perhaps even unnecessary.
* At a yield of 2.5 gallons per bushel of corn, butanol will produce 1.3 times as many Btu per bushel as ethanol.
* Making butanol probably does actually return more energy than making it consumes.
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