It's not exactly correct that we have the infrastructure to accomodate ethanol. Ethanol is water-soluble and therefore can't be pumped through pipelines -- water seeps into the pipelines and mixes with the fuel, requiring an energy-intensive redistillation at the station. The other ways to transport it are by truck (sort of defeats the purpose of saving fuel) and railroad tank cars (the current rail system doesn't have enough tankcars to accomodate ethanol as a primary transportation fuel).
Also, ethanol is not a very volatile fuel, meaning you can only drive about 70%-80% as far on a gallon versus gasoline.
It's better to think of ethanol as a transition fuel. The research & technology needed to efficiently convert biomass to ethanol is the same kind of R&D needed to create biodiesel, biobutanol, and other more practical fuels. Ethanol is probably the best place to start, and biofuels are probably going to be something of a moving target as our basic understanding of biofuel conversion improves.
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It's not exactly correct that we have the infrastructure to accomodate ethanol. Ethanol is water-soluble and therefore can't be pumped through pipelines -- water seeps into the pipelines and mixes with the fuel, requiring an energy-intensive redistillation at the station. The other ways to transport it are by truck (sort of defeats the purpose of saving fuel) and railroad tank cars (the current rail system doesn't have enough tankcars to accomodate ethanol as a primary transportation fuel). Also, ethanol is not a very volatile fuel, meaning you can only drive about 70%-80% as far on a gallon versus gasoline. It's better to think of ethanol as a transition fuel. The research & technology needed to efficiently convert biomass to ethanol is the same kind of R&D needed to create biodiesel, biobutanol, and other more practical fuels. Ethanol is probably the best place to start, and biofuels are probably going to be something of a moving target as our basic understanding of biofuel conversion improves.