Ethanol or so-called ethyl-alcohol is a type of alcohol made from plant fermentation conversing starch to sugar and changing sugar to be alcohol. By distilling alcohol 95%, it finally becomes "Ethanol".
Ethanol later be mixed with gasoline is ethanol with its purity rate of at least 99.5% by volume in order to be used as fuel. If ethanol is mixed with Benzene in different rates of proportion, it will be called as gasohol. If ethanol is mixed with diesel, it will be called as diesohol. Moreover, we can use pure ethanol as fuel directly in cars and engines that are appropriately adjusted. According to the study found that using ethanol in proper proportion to types of engines in ethanol proportion ranging from 0%-100% resulted in less pollution emission in CO, CO2, Hydrocarbon, Benzene and NO2 etc.
Ethanol can be classified into 2 types as follows:
- Anhydrous Ethanol ethanol containing least water or ethanol with its purity rate of 99% onwards and can be mixed with Benzene. This type of ethanol can be classified into 2 sub-types as follows:
- Denatured anhydrous ethanol ethanol used as fuel by adding contaminating substances to pure ethanol to make it inconsumable.
- Indentured anhydrous ethanol pure ethanol without any contaminating substances to make it consumable.
- Hydrous Ethanol ethanol used as alcohol fuel currently used in type of 95% or 99.5%. type 95% is derived from ordinary distilling with 5% of water as for type 99.5%, it contains water of merely 0.5% with 2 more additional processes and implementing Molecular Sieve Absorption
Gasohol in Thailand
In the present, by Ministry of Energy, it is allowed to produce 3 types of gasohol as follows:
- Gasohol E10 comprises of
- gasohol octane 91
- gasohol octane 95 This contains of ethanol not over 10% and not less than 9% with 90% of Benzene by volume. This could be replaced or swapped with both Benzene 95 and Benzene 91 without any engine adjustment.
- Gasohol E20 containing of ethanol not over 20% and not less than 19% with 80% of Benzene by volume
- Gasohol E85 containing of ethanol 85% with 15% of Benzene by volume or containing ethanol not less than 75%
*note: Ethanol mixed for gasohol production is in form of transformed ethanol.
