Alcohol anyone? Perspective on transportation fuel sector

Kemantha JAYAWARDHANA

ENERGY: Sri Lanka has long been dependant on fossil fuel for its energy needs. In doing so, we have turned our eyes away from a potential source of energy, biomass. If used properly, biomass can provide energy to produce electricity and to run our automobiles.

Amongst the many renewable energy options, alcohol (ethanol or ethyl alcohol) produced from sugar cane has a great potential to be the fuel of choice for Sri Lanka to replace gasoline (or petrol as locally known).

Ethanol is a clear, colourless, flammable oxygenated hydrocarbon, with the chemical formula C2 H5 OH. The oldest form of use of alcohol is that of a beverage.

However, the history of ethanol (most common form of alcohol) as a fuel dates back to the early days of the automobile.

In fact, the first automobile built by Henry Ford (model T) ran on ethanol fuel. It may be estimated that fuel ethanol accounts for roughly 70% of world ethyl alcohol production in 2003. And, this share is forecast to rise to over 80% by the end of the decade.

Ethyl alcohol or ethanol is an effective "octane booster" when mixed with gasoline in blends of 5 to 30%. Research has shown that the use of high ethanol content fuels can result in up to a 66% reduction of hydrocarbon emissions.

The mixture known as E10 or "Gasohol", which includes 10% of alcohol and 90% petrol (gasoline) is sold at pumps in countries such as USA, UK, Canada and Brazil.

Current vehicles are capable of using this E10 without any modifications to engines or fuel distribution system and are covered by the manufacturer's warranty.

Why Alcohol?

There are mainly two reasons why alcohol is suitable as an alternative transportation fuel. First, only liquid or gaseous fuels can be used in vehicle engines.

Out of many such sources of energy such as Petrol, LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas), bio gas, ethanol, methanol, hydrogen etc., only ethanol stand out to be the best candidate for Sri Lanka since other sources are either more expensive to produce in large quantities in Sri Lanka or they are non-renewable (such as Petrol and LPG).

Other reason is that alcohol production is already well established large scale business in Sri Lanka. On average, Sri Lanka produces about eight million litres of Alcohol (ethanol at 95% purity) per year at factories across the country.

Major portion of this is used to make beverage alcohol for domestic market. If ethanol were to use for blending with gasoline to produce fuel ethanol, the annual requirement of ethanol will be in the range of 26 million litres (for 10% ethanol in gasoline or E10).

Today we spent around rupees 30 billion on crude oil imports annually. A replacement of 10% of gasoline with ethanol means a saving of around rupees 700 million of foreign exchange directly and fuelling an internal economy in addition.

Critics against promoting renewable energy sources often argue that use of ethanol require extensive overhauling of gasoline engine system and components to make it ethanol compatible.

However, extensive studies done by various institutions around the globe has proved that mixing of ethanol up to 20% with gasoline does not require any modifications to the engine.

In fact, use of ethanol in the range of 10-20% would actually benefit the engine reducing the amount of unburned carbon particles by aiding more complete combustion due to presence of oxygen in the ethanol.

Bottlenecks

There are several obstacles to successful implementation of fuel ethanol policy in Sri Lanka. Most of these problems are due to our governments' dependency on short term solutions for problems and lack of insight to identify problem areas and suitable solutions.

First of all, Sri Lanka does not have a National Energy Policy. Hence, there is no set target to achieve nor that there is a clear vision to find and promote new energy sources to cater to the increasing energy demand.

Bureaucracy; ethanol is a controlled substance, hence, use and production is strictly controlled by the Department of Excise. Even obtaining a licence to carry out scientific research by individuals and institutions has become a tedious process.

Lack of knowledge about use of ethanol as a fuel. Public and the government officials are not knowledgeable about the use of ethanol as a fuel and they are being misinformed by the oil companies and agents working for oil companies.

No or very few research has been done to identify potential of ethanol as a fuel. No study has been done to identify resource sufficiency to produce nationally required quantities to replace gasoline and infrastructure availability and extent of existing infrastructure.

Recommendations

Formation of a National Ethanol Coalition to get beyond partisan gridlock and academic reports that lack real-world applicability.

To that end, a diverse group of business, academic, non-profit organizations, government officials and scientists and concerned individuals should be assembled to form this coalition.

Formulation of a National Energy policy and a National Renewable Energy Policy to fast track the development of alternative energy sources in the country.

Increase and broaden government funding for research and development of energy systems that are commercially viable.

Provide incentives to stimulate sugarcane production.

As past subsidy programme@TFs have demonstrated, farmers respond to market forces, shifting their production to crops that are the most profitable. Therefore, financial incentives are needed to develop markets for energy crops until demand is sufficiently high for profits from these crops to become self-sustaining.

Implement aggressive technology-intensive policies without waiting for resolution of debates over regulation-intensive policies.

Removal of excise tax on ethanol that is being used to blend with ethanol. Only beverage alcohol will be taxed.

Government bulk purchase of biomass fuels. This policy would guarantee either a fixed price or a fixed demand for biomass fuels.

Set emission caps for the vehicle sector. By setting emission caps for vehicles in a way that encourages the use of biofuels as a method of compliance, this type of policy can increase demand for fuels and improve urban air quality.

Lobby for GEF (Global Environment Facility) and other international grants that fund projects geared towards cutting total carbon emissions from transportation sector.

Increase education opportunities by expanding university curricula and industrial training in key fields such as natural products chemistry, and biotechnology.

The petroleum industry has a lot of reasons why we shouldn't even think about using a different fuel, and actually put out a lot of misinformation to curtail successful implementation of alternative fuel policy.

In Sri Lankan context, all our transportation fuel requirements are fulfilled by imported fossil fuel. Hence, we are ever susceptible to rise in crude oil prices in the world market that invariably result in an increase in the domestic commodity prices leading to high rate of inflation.

Although the government has taken some vital steps to introduce biomass based electricity generation to the island, it is yet to make any changes to gasoline based transportation system by way of biofuels.

It is too good an option to avoid given that use of fuel ethanol will also help us to be self-sufficient in our sugar requirement as it is the by product of sugar production.

Author is currently working as a part time researcher attached to the University of Moratuwa, Chemical and Process Engineering Department