Sake fueling Cars!

Japan has always been a technology loving and environment friendly country. Japan imports huge amounts of crude oil like other developed countries. The Japanese are now looking at cost effective and environment friendly alternatives for the crude oil. The Japanese have turned towards their traditional wine “sake.” Sake is a wine (more like a beer) made from brewing rice. This is the stuff every Japanese restaurant would serve after a good meal of “sushi” and “sashimi.” The ethanol made from rice would be used after blending it with petrol. So in future cars would be running on really strong saki.

Lately with record high crude oil prices agri-based fuels have gained popularity. Brazil has become one of the largest producers of agri-based fuels. They have pioneered the technology related to making ethanol from sugar-cane crops. Already up to 85% blend of ethanol and petrol is supplied throughout the country. Also cars that run on 100% petrol or any other blends of petrol is already available in the country. Now Brazilians are looking at bio-diesel in a big way. They are now using castor oil to make bio-diesel that can fuel diesel-based cars.

But still all these technologies seem to be not so cost effective because of their alternative use/demand. Take castor oil for example. In India 20 kg of castor seeds cost around Rs. 400 (from NCDEX). If 36% bio diesel can be extracted from it then one kg of bio-diesel would cost around 50Rs. to 55 Rs. This is nowhere near below Rs. 40 for per Lt. of Diesel being sold at pumps. Now let us take the “Japanese sake”; it takes more than one Kg of rice to produce half a Lt. of ethanol. This would not only mean high price but also could lead to food shortages! Since rice is a staple diet in many places including several parts of India as well as Japan. Use of crops like corn for production of ethanol in US has lead to doubling of prices. This impact can be felt in Mexico where their staple diet tortilla is made from corn.

The answer lies in finding alternative crops which does not use much of resources for production at the same time are cost effective because they are not already used elsewhere in the industry. The switchblade grass or jatropha can provide the answer. Both of these can be grown in arid lands without much use of resources required for agriculture. But lot of research work need to be done before these “non-food-low-resource” alternatives can become practical.