e85 gains strength as gas prices soar

Most consumers will know E85 is a blend of gas and ethanol. It consists of 15 percent gasoline and 85 percent ethanol, hence the name, e85. Today, most of the ethanol used in the United States is produced by America’s corn farmers. How many automobiles on the roads can use E85? Perhaps the number is more than you may think.

Eric Escudero a spokesperson of Colorado’s AAA, “6 million vehicles on the road are flex fuel vehicles. Especially General Motors and Ford manufactured vehicles.” GM estimates that they have approximately 2 million flex fuel vehicles driving on U.S. roads and there are another 4 million flex fuel cars on the roads by other manufacturers.

“All you have to do is check on the gas cap on the owners manual, you might have the option of using E85,” Escudero proclaims. Ethanol has less energy than pure gasoline. Because of this, there is about a 10-15 percent drop in fuel economy of the vehicle. AAA says that the percentage may be even higher. “It’s about 30 percent less efficient, so you’re not getting as good gas mileage.” If the price of ethanol is lower it absolutely makes sense.

The American ethanol industry is expected to produce about 6 billion gallons of E85 fuel, this year. Currently, American consumers use almost 390 million gallons every single day. Ethanol, however, is still just a small drop in the barrel of oil. As gas prices go through the ceiling and more ethanol is produced, it has the chance to become more popular.

Follow this link for this year’s list of flex-fuel cars

Producing cheaper Ethanol

Researchers from Cornell University have discovered a new plant enzyme that could make the production costs of cellulosic ethanol much less expensive then todays processes.

The researches say the enzyme might potentially enable plant material used to make ethanol can be broken down more efficiently than is possible using current technologies.

Today’s technologies use enzymes from microbes called “cellulases.” The microbes digest and process the cellulose in grasses and such rapidly growing trees. The microbial enzymes have a structure that makes them very good at combining and digesting plant’s cell wall, lignocellulose. Lignocellulose is a combination of lignin (a special type of cellulose) and regular cellulose.

The researchers say the plant enzymes of this new class has structure similar to these.

Jocelyn Rose, Cornell’s assistant professor of plant biology, says that a critical step in producing cellulosic ethanol involves breaking down a plant’s cell wall material and fermenting the sugars that are released.

“This is the first example of a cellulose-binding domain in a plant cell wall enzyme.” Rose says. “The bottleneck for conversion of lignocellulose into ethanol is efficient cellulose degradation. The discovery of these enzymes suggests there might be sets of new plant enzymes to improve the efficiency of cellulose degradation.”

Jocelyn Rose also said while they found the new enzyme in a tomato plant, they have evidence to suggest that such proteins are present in many other species of plants as well, which could be used for even more biofuel production.

These findings will appear in the issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry on April 20th.

E85 Fuel Pump Certification By End Of Year

Underwriters Laboratories announces excellent news for the ethanol industry. UL representatives say that they will be begin to accept E85 fuel pumps for intensive tests by the end of 2007. UL states that they are currently expecting to finalize studies and will publish certification requirements by the end of the fourth quarter of this year. Shortly after the publishing UL will begin to accept E85 dispensing equipment for certification compliance and safety screening.

UL has worked with the US Department of Energy in an expansive scientific research study that is researching the long term, potentially corrosive effects of highly concentrated ethanol on the components of E85 dispensers, and ethanol’s subsequent effects on fire and environmental safety.

The UL certification is expected to expand the infrastructure of distribution for E85 ethanol, which is now mainly managed in America’s Midwest. UL develops standards and safety for much than 19,000 merchandise types, including petroleum and other fuel systems.