Ethanol: High Octane Killer?

Motoring Channel Staff - 24/Apr/2007

California, USA — As car companies like Saab, Volvo, Ford and others ramp up development on their ethanol fuelled cars, a new study directed by a Stanford University professor suggests that burning ethanol may in fact be more dangerous to humans than burning petroleum.

Though the green house gas and CO2 emissions from burnt ethanol are fewer than those of petrol, Stanford Associate Professor Mark Jacobson, at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering explains that, "It's true that ethanol does decrease some pollutants, but it also increases some others."

The findings from the recent study (published April 18th, 2007) found that pollutants that result from the burning of ethanol fuel, which is likely to become more prevalent in a societies that want to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels,  can be as harmful and in some cases more harmful to humans that those of petrol.

Should we be alarmed? Not greatly, as the prevalence of ethanol powered cars has reached a critical mass, and though the Australian government is in favour of ethanol, E85 cars (cars that run on 85% ethanol) have not yet been launched here. 

Cyclists and those who spend a lot of time amid heavy traffic in the heavily developed cities of the world will probably already be aware of the carbon 'tang' in the air,

"If you want to use ethanol, fine, but don't do it based on health grounds. It's no better than gasoline, apparently slightly worse," Mr. Jacobson said. The Stanford Associate Professor's work was published in the Environmental Science and Technology magazine (run by the American Chemical Society), and claims that if all cars in America switched to E85 fuel, the ozone-relative death toll would rise by 185, with some 125 of those deaths in Los Angeles and North East.

How these extra deaths would occur is not entirely clear, but lung and respiratory ailments are a likely cause.

While the American study appears somewhat vague in its conclusions, car companies like Saab have already launched models such as the 9-5 2.3t BioPower, which runs on E85 ethanol blend fuel. Saab claims a huge 70% reduction of CO2 emissions, and because of the high octane nature of the fuel (107 RON, compared to Australia's highest98 RON petrol grade) the BioPower Saab develops similar levels of power to the petrol models.

Until now ethanol has been largely acknowledged as a safe renewable fuel source (most ethanol comes from crops such as sugar cane, wheat, corn etc), but the study points out that it's not without its own issues. You can be sure we'll be hearing more about this in the future.