Ethanol fuel has now been on sale in Brazil for 30 years.
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In May 1979, only three and half years after the national programme for alcohol was announced, the first public pumps were opened at service stations.
Now alcohol, officially re-named ‘etanol’ (without the ‘h’ in Portuguese), has already passed the volume of petrol used in the country.
The Fiat 147, in July 1979, was the first car homologated to be fuelled purely with ethanol, followed soon after by the VW Passat, Chevrolet Chevette (Kadett C in Europe) and the Ford Corcel (a Renault 12 variant). At first, ethanol was restricted to government fleets and there were just 2,000 ethanol cars in the country then.
The second oil crisis (1979/80) brought public sale forward, even though engines were not yet fully developed.
Today, there are over 8m ‘flex-fuel’ vehicles on the country’s roads (some 70% are run only on the biofuel). FFVs account for alsmot 90% of new light vehicles sales.
Cosan, the largest domestic group producing ethanol, purchased Esso distribution operations in Brazil in April 2008. Until then, no ethanol producer had shown any interest in setting up its own service station network. The company sells ethanol and oil products under the Esso brand.
An ethanol summit was recently held in São Paulo, organized by Unica, the group of distilleries that produce 60% of Brazil’s ethanol.
Unical president Marcos Jank told just-auto that “second-generation ethanol, made from sugar cane cellulose, has the potential to almost double production from the same land area. Companies abroad are also working to use agricultural, organic and industrial residues to obtain ethanol”.
Two companies demonstrated the potential of obtaining diesel fuel, petrol and jet fuel from sugar cane.
Fernando Calmon
