Ethanol: As a fuel

Did you guys know what ethanol (chemical formula: 6 hydrogen atoms, 2 carbon atoms, and 1 oxygen atom for a molecule. No need to know the chemical formula if you don't even understand the words "chemical formula", "atom", "hydrogen", "carbon", "oxygen", and "molecule") is? It's a type of drinkable alcohol. In fact, it's in your wine and beer and other alcoholic beverages. Drinkable as it is, but it's also being used as a fuel for some powerplants, fireplaces, automotive vehicles... It's also in your white board cleaner. Ethanol could dissolve ink pretty well and is safe to be drink, as long as you don't keep on drinking alcohol until your stomach's the size of 6 bowling balls stack on top of each other. But this article is about using ethanol as a fuel. Here’s how most people make ethanol.

The feedstock for making ethanol are living or recently living things, leftover food, and food wastes. To use sewage waste and animal droppings (including human droppings) as feedstock for ethanol, I don’t know if we can do that. Maybe it’s impossible to use them as feedstock for ethanol. Don’t know what feedstock is, search for its definition on www.dictionary.com. Grind the feedstock up into a fine powder and mix the powder with water. Add enzymes to break the powder into tiny particles. Heat the mixture up to breakdown the particles even more and then cool it down. Add some more enzymes, breaking the particles into sugar. Mix yeast with the mixture for 48 hours or so, and voila: ethanol, at least it’s still in the mixture. Filter out the water and remaining particles. Literally! Filter them. Filter the water from the ethanol by using a molecular sieve, which is just another form of a filter. And you got pure ethanol ready to be use instantly as a fuel or mixed with gasoline to be used as a fuel.

There’s one more way of making ethanol. It’s pretty unconventional, since that way of making ethanol was patented recently. The company that patented it is Algenol. A type of algae called cyanobacteria will grow in a tank of salt water. Like other types of algae, it sucks in carbon dioxide, but releases ethanol along with oxygen. The ethanol evaporated and will be piped away to be purified. So you’ll only need carbon dioxide and nutrients for cyanobacteria in order to make ethanol.

So as you can see, ethanol’s a renewable resource. But it has several drawbacks when burned. Burning ethanol would release more carbon dioxide for the same energy amount as gasoline and more ozone-forming pollutants than gasoline. Yes, ground ozone. It could increase the risk of people getting diseases affecting their respitory system, or “breathing system” as I called it, and stunt plant growth. Ground ozone is caused by sunlight reacting with unburned gasoline in the air and nitrogen oxides (A type of molecule. Don’t understand it, better study it right away). Flex-fuel vehicles, vehicles that are capable of using gasoline, ethanol, and any blends of both, aren’t as fuel-efficient as vehicles using only gas (By gas, I meant gasoline).

Although it has several drawbacks, it also have some advantages over gasoline. Burning ethanol releases less carbon monoxide, a toxic gas, and less carbon dioxide than gasoline. It’s a particulate-free burning fuel. Particulate matters are very extra tiny solid particles, like soot, causing an estimated 200,000 deaths per year in Europe alone. It’s a low emission fuel. So using ethanol as a substitute for gas could help in reducing global warming and deaths associated with carbon monoxide and particulate matter. Not just that, ethanol have a higher octane rate than gasoline, meaning more compression of the fuel allowed before burning in an engine. More compression allowed means engines using both ethanol and gas or ethanol-only engines produce more power than gas-only engines.

Most ethanol being used as fuel in the world today is blended with gasoline. In the US and Europe, the blend of ethanol and gas with the highest percentage of ethanol is E85, a blend of 85% ethanol and, usually, 15% gasoline. In Brazil, flex-fuel vehicles are capable of consuming only ethanol. Ethanol is growing in popularity, although blended ethanol and gasoline have a lower octane rate than normal ethanol, but it still have an octane rate equal to or greater than premium gasoline.

 

So, as you can see, ethanol is a very good replacement for gasoline, especially since the world’s running out of crude oil, and gasoline is from crude oil (It’s the black, gooey, and oily liquid underground drilled up from oil rigs. Crude oil could be separated into plastic, gasoline, diesel, jet fuel…). Crude oil is pretty useful, right? Right! Never run out, right? Wrong!!!!!. So I suggest you using ethanol. But keep this in mind: most of the world’s ethanol use crops as feedstock, so using ethanol could change farmland negatively, despite the image below.

Today's LA project presentation

Okay. Hello, everybody! Whew! Luckily for me, it's already evening, since it was a little embarrassing presenting our LA project in front of my LA classmates and teacher. Probably you noticed it, that I said our, since my partner for this project is a little guy who is my best friend in school named Andy. Today, groups in my LA class, including mine, presented our LA projects in front of the class. Me and Andy, presented a video game manual for an imaginary game that have have parts that is also in the book "When my Name was Keoko". In fact, every group in my LA class have to present either a video game manual, a soundtrack, a movie trailer, or a children's book that is based on or have parts that are shared by the book. There are still some classmates of mine in the class who still needs to show their projects.

It's kinda funny watching some people with their projects or students' projects from the LA class before mine. For example, Harry, a classmate of mine in LA class, dropped his video game manual while he was holding it and presenting. Another example is a movie trailer made by 4 boys. Seriously, it's devastatingly funny! Well, part of it is funny and part of it is emotional and dramatic. Those boys would get the trophy for "the funniest LA project I had ever seen". While the "most emotional, dramatic, and awesome LA project I'd seen" trophy goes to a girl in my LA class, called by most people as Jenny. She made a movie trailer for the imaginary "When my Name was Keoko" movie.

Yes, you noticed it, that one girl got that trophy. In the trailer, she didn't act, nor did her friends or anybody else in this school acted. Instead, she used the computer, or if not always, then mostly. She used footages caught in WWII or some other wars and animation. Not that you have to use animation and video clips. The animation, which is partly funny, the video clips, and the background music combined together made the trailer fantastic, and somewhat funny too. It was partly funny since the ending said "Connection lost" while animated "Japanese" soldiers were marching across the screen. They were holding their guns the wrong way. If they try to fire their guns normally, then the gun is upside down. It have some aspects of a real movie trailer. It's so dramatic and seemingly intended-only-for-action-movies, combining with the music, that in one point, I got goosebumps. Not that I'm scared. I just have them.

A group, comprising of a boy named Andrew and a girl named Sarah, made a soundtrack for the imaginary movie "When my Name was Keoko". As a class, we didn't actually get to listen to any soundtrack made by the students for their LA project. But Andrew's and Sarah's soundtrack are pretty detailed, since if you're gonna "buy" the CD, the CD also included an explanation book what songs they chose and why. The songs that they chose fitted with the storyline of the book, and if there is a movie, the movie's storyline. So, good job for Andrew and Sarah.

Josh, David, and Rich made a video game manual together containing 8 levels, not including the bonus ones. I didn't get to read all of their manual. But I can say that they linked the pages together as in pages in a notebook. I wonder where did they go to link the pages together like that. I'm saying this as a complement, not as an insult, ok? Josh, David, and Rich?

Well, that's all I wanna tell for today's LA project presentation.

Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

Bonjour! Did you guys read this Maximum Ride novel? It's a pretty good novel, although it's for young adults. The whole Maximum Ride series was written by James Patterson. It's not an excellent novel, but it's pretty good though. So if the ratings are from 1 to 5, I'll give it a 4.
This book have excellent literature written in first person and third person and very good vocabulary. I learned the work "schmuck" for the first time by reading this book. It also have fast-paced action, since there are a lot of fights and duels in this book. It's pretty interesting, although I don't know how the antagonists would reduce the population of the earth by one half.
It's pretty interesting, since the literature in here is excellent and the vocabulary is also very good. If some of you guys wanna read this book, I recommend you read the first book of the Maximum Ride series first, and the first book of the series is Maximum Ride: the Angel Experiment. Wanna impress your friends, teachers, parents, and relatives by your writing the your vocabulary, read the Maximum Ride series.