According to an article in The New Economic Times, Fiat is planning to launch a new ethanol-powered engine for the Brazilian market. Ethanol is widely used for fuel in Brazil and half of the country's sugar cane crops are currently used for its production. Fiat intends the motor to be run on fuel that the ethanol producers create themselves, saving on taxes. What is most interesting about this story, though, is that it seems the new engine will be based on a current diesel block. In fact, a small amount of diesel fuel is required to run the engine.

"Use of additives (in ethanol) makes running (an engine) dangerous, subject to explosions," according to Fiat Powertrain Technologies product development engineer Joao Irineu Medeiros. "The diesel will be just enough for ignition and the ethanol will complete the combustion," he adds. It sounds like the new Fiat design will be a compression ignition engine running on e-diesel. Instead of being mixed at the pump, though, Fiat is planning to keep the fuels separate until injected into the engine. Proper tuning would be essential, which would explain why Fiat needs until 2010 to bring this engine to market.

[Source: The New Economic Times]

Now that the seemingly immortal Fidel Castro has finally stepped aside in Cuba, a whole new set of questions arises. At some point, the U.S. trade embargo my finally be lifted after more than four decades, opening the possibility of trade with the island nation. In the years B.C. (before Castro) Cuba was the world's sugar producer but the intervening years have not been kind to the industry. Cane production is one tenth of what it once was. The development of a whole new market beyond crystallized sucrose and Bacardi may well play a part in revitalizing the Cuban economy in future years. Land use studies of the island have concluded that Cuba could produce 2-3 billion gallons of cane ethanol annually. The relatively small local demand means that most of the biofuel could be exported, earning the country a lot of hard currency. It's only a small fraction of what the U.S. needs, but it's a start. If cellulosic processes that could utilize more of the biomass are developed, the export amount could potentially be a lot more. We'll just have to wait and see.

[Source: Wall Street Journal]