Sugar and alcohol industries want to substitute diesel for alcohol in their fleet
Gazeta Mercantil - 04/01/2008
The sugar and alcohol companies of the Country want to use alcohol instead of diesel either in the whole or in part of its own fleet of trucks, agricultural machines and stationary machinery for sugarcane crop irrigation. Last week, during the 10th Meeting for the Mechanization and Production of Sugarcane, held by the Institute of Agro-industrial Development (Idea), in Ribeirão Preto, representatives of the industries greatly debated the issue with technicians from the makers of trucks and agricultural machines, manufacturers of systems of fuel injection and academics. "Scania is aware of the interest of the sector in having a diesel-ethanol engine and then continues working to develop it", said Scania's sales engineer Emilio Paulo Fontanello. Richardson Gouveia, from Case IH, revealed "they are under negotiation with one of their engine suppliers (Scania or Cummins) to start the tests with an ethanol-engine sugarcane harvester for this harvest yet". According to Delphi's engineer Orlando Volpato Filho, the concept of the diesel engine running on ethanol has existed for more than 30 years. "But, now, with the new electronic diesel engines, in order to use alcohol it is necessary to have an original and totally integrated electronic injection system, so that the complete control of all the variables of the engine is achieved", Volpato said. The substitution of diesel for ethanol is not a new issue. Ten years ago, before thinking about the biodiesel mixture in the diesel, the government studied the implementing the mixture of anhydrous alcohol in the oil byproduct. Before that, in the 1980's, at the zenith of the Proálcool (National Alcohol Program), many plants made homemade conversions in engines that originally ran on diesel and gasoline to alcohol. And, at the time, makers like Scania and Mercedes-Benz even happened to offer the plants new vehicles with engines converted for the use of the alcohol. "I think this movement seeking new uses for ethanol is positive and healthy due to the environmental issues and to the price and offer of alcohol. Embraer airplane Ipanema runs on alcohol, which is a proof that there are new uses for alcohol ", said Szwarc, consultant of the Sugar Cane Industry Union (Unica), pointing out that the use of alcohol in diesel fleets would serve the captive fleets, especially the sugarcane plants'. "The experience of conversion of engines may have stopped in Brazil, but Scania continued its research in Sweden, focused on the application of alcohol in urban buses' engines, due to environmental issues", declared Fontanello. In 1989, Scania started the serial production of converted diesel engines to alcohol and, so far, it produced 600 of them, which equip buses running in the capital, Stockholm, and in other Swedish cities. "In São Paulo, in the São Mateus - Jabaquara corridor, there is a Scania bus working since November, 2007, which runs on alcohol (95%) and additives (5%)", said Fontanello.