Reasons for Ethanol

Ethanol is a clean burning alternative to gasoline of other fossil fuels. It can is blended with gasoline to make the emissions less than regular gasoline. Ethanol is made by fermenting sugar, then distillation to remove water, and dehydration.

Ethanol is used by mixing ethanol with gasoline. The most common type of ethanol gasoline mixture is E10 which is a 10% ethanol mixture in gasoline. In countries like Brazil and Argentina They use a more fuel efficient mixture, E100, with only a small amount of gasoline only required to start the engine. In the United States the most common type of mixture is E20 and E25 a 20% and 25% mixture. Ethanol is stating to become a popular fuel in the US, by 2006 there were already 6 million E85 compatible vehicles on the road.

There are a lot of advantages to using ethanol fuel. In ethanol fuel there are less emissions of carbon monoxide and nitrogen. Making ethanol fuel is cheaper to make because the resources required to make it are renewable like sugar cane and corn. The price at the pump would be cheaper because we would not have to rely on overseas countries to supply us with fossil fuels when we can make it our self, so the price would drop to $1 a gallon.

Compared to the advantages there are still some disadvantages. The greatest disadvantage is the labor to collect the crops required to make the fuel. There is still some gasoline required to start the engine and the vehicles can run on 100% ethanol but in the US we would still need a mixture of ethanol and gasoline because we are not ready to fully switch over to this new energy source.

The US should be using more ethanol fuel because it would lower the carbon monoxide levels and reduce smog levels, which would lower pollution levels. We would also save billions of dollars each year from not having to by as much crude oil from overseas countries.