Talk:Ethanol fuel in Brazil

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Flex-fuel cars drive record Brazil Dec auto sales:

"[...] In December [2005], flex-fuel cars registered record monthly sales of 120,000 units, up 15 percent from November in the category. After the technology was launched in early 2003, sales of flex-fuel models have grown steadily and accounted for 71 percent of total vehicle sales in December. In December 2004, flex-fuel sales were 29 percent of total vehicle sales."

--Pinnecco 15:54, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] The Present Day

I think this article is getting into shape, but there are many PoVs and texts that are about Brazil's first introductions of Alcohol fuel (the late 70s and 80s). For example, the caption under the poster warning about mixing fuels is old and outdated, and perhaps it would be better if we remove it (although I updated the caption text before).

Here are current information about Ethanol in Brazil (report from VEJA):

  • Last December [2005], 73% of all cars sold in Brazil worked with flex-fuel engines.
  • With the success of flex-fuel cars, Brasil is now the first country to make VIABLE the production and consume of an alternative energy fuel.
  • Thanks to the Ethanol, Brazil is about to be auto-suficient in its oil production. This is a huge leap considering that about 10 years ago Brazil had to import half of the petrol it consumed. This success is also possible based on the cutting edge technology developed by Petrobras for deep-water exploration, since more than 65% of Brazil's oild fields are 400 meters under the sea. Brazil's auto suficiency will be met with the introduction of Petrobras P-50 platform which will happen in the next weeks.
  • The return of Ethanol fuel in Brazil (thanks to the introduction of flex-engines) helped the country to reduce its historical dependency of imported oil. Only this year, Brazil will produce 18 bilion litters of alcohol and will keep its leadership as the biggest Ethanol producer.
  • Brazil is about to start exporting Ethanol to Japan

--Pinnecco 10:25, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Amazon rainforest

"Also, Brazil would probably want to use its own wood - however, the Amazon rainforest is threatened enough as it is and should not be tampered with further." I agree with that statement but I don't think that kind of language is suitable for an encyclopedia. It's not our business to write about what should and what souldn't be done but to report the facts. If there's no objections in the next few days I'll delete that line. --cassini83 18:35, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Agreed! --Pinnecco 20:21, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Brazil to displace diesel with soybean based biodiesel

Published on Sunday, April 17, 2005 by the Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN) The Future of Ethanol by David Morris

Want to see the potential of biofuels? Visit Brazil, as I did a few weeks ago.

In Brazil, by law, all gasoline contains a minimum of 25 percent alcohol. Yet ethanol is so popular it actually accounts for 40 percent of all vehicle fuel.

By 2007, 100 percent of all new Brazilian cars may be able to run on 100 percent ethanol. Brazilian sugar-cane-fed biorefineries will be capable of producing sufficient ethanol to allow the entire fleet, new and old cars alike, to do so.

In Brazil, ethanol is now being used in aviation. Small planes, like crop dusters, are switching to ethanol because it is a superior fuel and is more widely available, even in remote parts of the country, than conventional aviation fuel.

Its stunning success with ethanol has encouraged Brazil to begin displacing diesel fuel with vegetable oils from its vast soybean crop. Within 15 years it expects to substitute biodiesel for 20 percent of its conventional diesel.

[edit] Removal of NPOV

While I think that there are some bias in most parts of this article i could not find a discussion about it so it is impossible to know what is the NPOV dispute in that section. Feel free to restate the NPOV violation but state why you thing that there is a bias on that section of the text. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Alvaroludolf (talk • contribs) 15:41, 5 February 2007 (UTC).

"Unfortunately, despite this cost differential in production..." That's a pretty clear POV, which continues through the paragraph. None of what I see in that paragraph is factually false, but what does it omit? Sadly, I don't know that -- the authors of the article are clearly better informed than I am. I'd be tempted to remove 'unfortunately' except that then the NPOV violation is harder to spot. The next few sections are also dubiously neutral (albeit also quite well-written). Bhudson (talk) 20:34, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Some recent articles Feb/07 which might be worth to read

--Pinnecco 09:53, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] This blurb doesn't seem relevant

"This is small by today's standards, about one third the size of new plants. Finland's fifth nuclear plant currently under construction is for 1,600 MW. This plant's expected cost of electricity production is EUR 2.37 c/kWh which for Finland was cheaper than coal or natural gas at 2003 prices, not counting carbon emission costs or penalties for the carbon based fuels. http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf76.htm"

We are talking about Ethanol fuel in Brazil. I don't think we need to know the Euro cost of nuclear energy in Finland... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Anarchman (talk • contribs) 21:51, 29 April 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Why all of this irrelevant info on Bagasse in this article?

Why is info about electricity generation from bagasse in this article about ethanol?

It's OK for info about the use of bagasse by-products in the use of fermentation and sale of excess electricity from fermentation plants, but not this large section about this. I think it's out of place.

I think that the info on bagasse be moved to the sparse article on bagasse, and that this article on ethanol use in Brazil then reference and link to that.

If nobody objects, I'll be doing that sometime in the future. Thanks.

[edit] Understanding the graph

I want to make sure I understand what I am reading here:

sugarecane: 344 million metric tonnes (50% sugar, 50% alcohol) sugar: 23 million tonnes (30% is exported) ethanol: 14 million m³ (7.5 anhydrous, 6.5 hydrated; 2.4% is exported

I believe this says that there were 344 mt of cane produced, and that it was used 50/50 for sugar and ethanol. In other words, 172 mt were used for ethanol production. Is this correct? Can someone tell me for sure one way or the other?

My goal here is to answer the question "how much sugarcane is needed to produce a million litres of ethanol". This seemingly important number isn't found in that simple form in any of the articles I've looked at here!

Maury (talk) 13:05, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I think the number you're looking for is 85 liters/tonne. That's the conversion factor a Brazil official presented at a U.S. Senate hearing last year. (see [1], a slide near the end of the presentation compares corn-ethanol liter/tonne to sugar cane's). This number is roughly consistent with the 14000 liter/172 tonnes implied in this article. InNuce (talk) 19:43, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Excellent, thank you! I would like to put this somewhere easily accessible, but I'm not sure which article would be most appropriate -- it seems a little off topic here. Maury (talk) 22:29, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Actually, do you have a similar number for tonnes of sugar processed from one tonne of cane? I ask because the only measurements of production I can find outside Brazil and the US are for sugar production (ie, Cuba's peak was 80 million tonnes) and I'm trying to understand how much cane there is. Maury (talk) 23:29, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Thats why the Brazil´s economy is so goo0d —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.135.0.165 (talk) 00:58, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Brazilianethanolposter.JPG

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BetacommandBot (talk) 04:41, 12 February 2008 (UTC)