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Source: The post is based on the article “Understanding ethanol blending” published in The Hindu on 17th August 2022.
What is the News?
The Prime Minister has announced that India has achieved its target of blending 10% sugarcane-extracted ethanol in petrol ahead of schedule.
What is Ethanol?
What is first-generation and second-generation Ethanol?
In first-generation ethanol or 1G, raw materials used are food sources like sugarcane and seeds while Second-generation ethanol or 2G uses farm waste after harvests like rice husks, corn cobs, wheat straw and sugarcane bagasse.
What is Ethanol Blending?
Blending ethanol with petrol to burn less fossil fuel while running vehicles is called ethanol blending.
Ethanol blending will help bring down the share of oil imports (almost 85%) and save a considerable amount of precious foreign exchange. Secondly, more ethanol output would help increase farmers’ incomes.
Currently, 10% of the petrol that powers the vehicle is ethanol. Though India have had an E10 — or 10% ethanol as a policy for a while, it is only this year that the government have achieved that proportion. India’s aim is now to increase this ratio to 20% by 2025.
How have other countries performed in Ethanol Blending?
The U.S, China, Canada and Brazil all have ethanol blending programmes. Amongst the developing countries, Brazil stands out.
– Brazil had legislated that the ethanol content in petrol should be in the 18-27.5% range, and it finally touched the 27% target in 2021.
What are the challenges before the Auto Industry?
The challenges before the industry when it comes to 20% ethanol blended fuel are: a) the optimisation of engines for higher ethanol blends, b) the conduct of durability studies on engines and field trials before introducing E20 compliant vehicles, c) storage is also going to be the main concern. For example, if E10 supply has to continue in tandem with E20 supply, storage would have to be separate which then raises costs.
