Your choices:
1 Fuel: liquid; 2 Biomass (fermentable sludge); 3 Transport
| What is your resource? | What do you want to deliver? | What is the service the customer wants? |
| Biomass (digestible sludge) | District cooling | Comfortable indoor climate |
| 2 Biomass (fermentable sludge) | District heating | Electricity |
| Biomass (solid) | Electricity | Process cooling (< 0 °C) |
| Geothermal | Fuel: Gaseous | Process heat/steam (50 - 150 °C) |
| Sunshine | 1 Fuel: Liquid | Process heat (150 - 1000 °C) |
| Water | Fuel: Solid | Process heat (> 1000 °C) |
| Wind | Local cooling (ind. house) | 3 Transport |
| Residual oils/fats etc | Local heating (ind. house) |
Ethanol mixes readily with gasoline and mix-in ratios of 5-10% are already used as standard in many countries. Such a low in-mix will not influence the engine performance but once the amount of ethanol exceeds some 40% the engine will need optimisation to perform at its best.
Because of the relatively low energy content per volume (21.2 MJ/l) as compared to gasoline (33.0 MJ/l) any in-mix to higher ratios, such as E85 with 85% ethanol in gasoline, will significantly increase the total volume of fuel that has to be filled.
The lowered volumetric heat content of the fuel is, however, not a major problem since it is only a question about the number of filling stations. The main hindrances for the use of ethanol as a gasoline in-mix are instead:
- The price for ethanol. The price reflects mainly the cost for distillation and is not likely to drop within a foreseeable future.
- The raw material for ethanol. A large fraction of today's ethanol production is based on dedicated crops (maize) grown on fertile land. An increasing worldwide awareness of the scarcity of such land has triggered a reaction to the use of ethanol as a fuel.