Butanol or butyl alcohol can be demonstrated to work in the Internal Combustion (IC) engine designed for use with gasoline without modification. It can be produced from biomass (biobutanol) as well as fossil fuels (petro-butanol). Both biobutanol and petro-butanol have the same chemical properties. Butanol is less corrosive than ethanol and has higher energy content than ethanol, similar energy content in gasoline. In comparison to ethanol, butanol is less prone to water contamination. As a result, it could be distributed using the same infrastructure used to transport gasoline. It can be used alone in an internal-combustion engine, or it can be mixed with gasoline (127). Four butyl alcohols can be distinguished. They all have the same chemical composition consisting of 4 …show more content…
This means that n-butanol will have less tendency towards cavitation and vapor lock problem, which can eliminate the need for very special blends during the summer and winter months as the gasoline. As the heat of vaporization of butanol is less than half of that of ethanol, an engine running on butanol should be easier to start in cold weather than one running on ethanol or methanol. In addition, the auto-ignition temperature of the n-butanol is lower than ethanol or methanol, which also results in less ignition problems at cold start or low load conditions. As butanol has a very low vapor pressure point and a high flash point, it is a much safer fuel to use in high temperatures (134). One advantage of butanol over ethanol is that it is much less anhydrous, which greatly reduces the risk of water contain absorption by the fuel, with a higher latent heat of vaporization, butanol is expected to have lower indicated specific fuel consumption. This lower latent heat of vaporization may also limit evaporation problems especially in a stratified direction injection spark ignition (DISI) and in cold