Friday, December 12, 2008

Bioethanol shippment

With more boethanol into the market, the issue of transporting ethanol will attract more attention.

In a short term, the shipments of ethanol to terminals can be handled mostly by tanker truck and rail tank car rather than pipelines. In the long term, can we ship the ethanol by pipeline as gasoline? If so, the following issues need to be aware of and solved:

1. Ethanol’s water affinity. Because of the high solubility of ethanol in water, water accumulation in pipelines is a normal occurrence, which may risks rendering ethanol unusable as a transportation fuel.
2. Corrosion. Ethanol-related corrosion problems can be caused ethanol behavior in the pipe. The typical one is stress corrosion cracking, which is very hard to detect. The main factors involve in the type of metal (carbon steel), physical environment (areas of stress concentration, near weld heat effect zone), chemical environment (Dissolved oxygen), and other minors. This damage may be accelerated at weld joints or “hard spots” where the steel metallurgy has been altered.

To address these issues, the technical feasibility is the first step; then significant investments in new and modified facilities and operational practices will be demanded.

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