Hi guys,
One of the task groups at the EN meetings I attend is to investigate adding 5% or 10% of bio-ethanol to gasoline - well actually there is nothing stopping us from doing this today - except that everyone wants to make sure that it doesn't cause problems.
Loads of data from Brazil on bio-ethanol as a fuel, but they don't have winters like we do in Northern Europe - and we don't want to see fuel adsorbing water and freezing in the tank or any other issues arise - so there is still some test work to be completed.
One extra use for bio-ethanol will be to replace the industry sourced methanol (methyl alcohol) used to make bio-diesel. In Europe, bio-diesel is predominantly Rape seed oil methyl ester - surplus ethanol from wine (say) would let the industry make the ethyl ester instead - again more work needs to be completed.
HMC&E:
It's not only the UK, the whole of Europe very rigorously controls ethanol for tax purposes - it was quite a task just shipping the ultra pure ethanol test samples around the different participating organisations in Europe.
The bio-ethanol producer will simply add a denaturant to the ethanol before it is shipped to the refinery, and denatured ethanol is not a tax issue.
But today every country has it's own denaturant - and any possible interactions need to be studied as well - or a single denaturant agreed upon.
Robert