How had I not heard of butanol being used as a fuel before today? I subscribe to three auto-enthusiast magazines and pick up the occasional car mag at the grocery if there’s something I want to read, but butanol was never on my radar until I read an article online at Motor Trend today. I read that article with a grain of salt, as it does a good job of bashing ethanol and must not have been written with the current price of gas being nearly a dollar/gallon more than ethanol right now. I guess we’ll have to wait for the Middle East to settle down to get fuel prices back in line. That will likely happen, but I’ll bet it doesn’t stay that way.
I’ll have to dig for more information, and maybe those of you that read this can do some research of your own as well, but here are the basics of what I’ve seen so far. Butanol can be made from the same biomass as ethanol. It was being looked into as a fuel in the 1950s and 1960s, but fell out of favor because the processes in place to produce butanol were costly in comparison to petroleum based fuels. The microorganisms used to produce butanol would begin to degrade as alcohol concentration increased. Now there are new and genetically modified microbes that make the process much more economical and are able to better withstand the production process.
The reason butanol is an attractive alternative to ethanol is that is doesn’t carry with it some of the same limitations as ethanol. It’s energy content is much closer to gasoline’s than ethanol which translates to a minimal loss in MPG. Also, from what I’ve seen so far most vehicles can run on biobutanol without modification as it doesn’t have the corrosive effect of ethanol. Another advantage is that butanol is able to be distributed along existing infrastructure like pipelines, an issue which has been a limiting factor in ethanol production.
Right now it seems its biggest drawback is that the industry is in its infancy even more so than ethanol, but on the bright side ethanol refineries can be refitted to manufacture butanol. I’m going to keep my eyes peeled for more information on this fuel because I feel there is more to it than I’ve seen so far. I’d like to see a comparison of how much grain or biomass it takes to make a gallon butanol versus a gallon of ethanol. It would also be good to have a comparison of how much energy is needed to convert the biomass into each alcohol especially in the light of POET coming out with much more efficient refining technology just recently. Seems like one of those too good to be true kind of things so I’ll keep it in mind, and if any of you find out anything be sure to let me know as well.
BioButanol, About.com, butyfuel™
