Ethanol Impetus

Subject: Environment

Section: Climate Change

Concept:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at a G20 Energy Ministers’ meet recently, said that India has rolled out 20% ethanol-blended petrol this year and aims to “cover the entire country by 2025”.

About Biofuel:

Biofuel is a fuel that is produced over a short time span from biomass, rather than by the very slow natural processes involved in the formation of fossil fuels, such as oil.
Since biomass can be used as a fuel directly (e.g., wood logs), some people use the words biomass and biofuel interchangeably.
However, the word biofuel is usually reserved for liquid or gaseous fuels, used for transportation.
Most of biofuel consumption occurs as a blend with refined petroleum products such as gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil, and kerosene-type jet fuel.
However, some biofuels do not require blending with their petroleum counterparts and are referred to as drop-in biofuels.
The most common biofuels now are –
Bioalcohols such as ethanol, propanol, and butanol (a substitute for petrol/gasoline);
Biodiesel (a substitute for diesel);
Bio-oils (substitutes for kerosene).

Generations of Biofuel:

Biofuels are also divided into four categories depending on their origin and production technologies.
First Generation
1G biofuels are produced from consumable food items containing starch (rice and wheat) and sugar (beets and sugarcane) for bioalcohols, or vegetable oils for biodiesel.
However, the yields of 1G biofuels are low and can have negative impacts on food security.
Second Generation
2G biofuels are mainly obtained from non-food feedstocks such as forest/industry/agricultural wastes and waste or used vegetable oils.
Third Generation
3G biofuels, known as ‘algae fuel’, are derived from algae in the form of both, biodiesel and bioalcohols.
Although the yield of 3G biofuels is approximately 10 times higher than 2G biofuels, producing adequate algal biomass and scaling up extraction techniques are as yet unresolved challenges.
Fourth Generation
Like the third generation, 4G biofuels are made using non-arable land.
However, unlike the third, they do not need the destruction of biomass.
This class of biofuels includes electro fuels and photo-biological solar fuels.

Ethanol Blending

Ethanol is a biofuel, naturally produced by the fermentation of sugars by yeasts or by petrochemical processes like ethylene hydration.
Ethanol is high in oxygen content, allowing an engine to more thoroughly combust fuel.
In ethanol blending, a blended motor fuel containing ethyl alcohol derived from agricultural products is blended with petrol specifically.

How is Ethanol Produced?

In India, the nodal department for the promotion of fuel-grade ethanol-producing distilleries is the Department of Food and Public Distribution (DFPD).
Ethanol is produced or procured from sugarcane-based raw materials which are – C & B heavy molasses, sugarcane juice, sugar syrup, surplus rice with Food Corporation of India (FCI) and maize.
A paper released by the NITI Aayog stated, that in 2019, over 110 billion liters of ethanol fuel was produced globally.
The US and Brazil account for 84% of the global production followed by the European Union, China, India, Canada and Thailand.

India’s Biofuel Policy:

In 2021-22, the Central government amended the Biofuel Policy (2018) to set a target of country-wide blending rates of 20% ethanol and 5% biodiesel by 2025.
According to the Roadmap for ethanol blending in India 2020-2025 report from NITI Aayog, India will need to increase ethanol production capacity from the expected 3.3 billion liters (in 2020–2021) to at least 10.2 billion liters (5.5 billion liters from sugarcane and 4.7 billion liters from grains) by 2025.