Ethanol
...Petrobras gas station at São Paulo with dual fuel service, marked A for alcohol (ethanol) and G for gasoline.
Six typical Brazilian full flex-fuel models from several car makers, popularly called "flex" cars, that run on any blend of ethanol and gasoline.
Brazil is the world's second largest producer of ethanol and the world's largest exporter, and it is considered to have the world's first sustainable biofuels economy and the biofuel industry leader.[1][2][3][4] Together, Brazil and the United States lead the industrial world in global ethanol production, accounting together for 70% of the world's production[5] and nearly 90% of ethanol used for fuel. [6] In 2006 Brazil produced 16.3 billion litres (4.3 billion U.S. liquid gallons),[7] which represents 33.3% of the world's total ethanol production and 42% of the world's ethanol used as fuel.[6] Total production is predicted to reach at least 26.4 billion litres (6.97 billion U.S. liquid gallons) for 2008.[8] Brazil’s 30-year-old ethanol fuel program uses modern equipment and cheap sugar cane as feedstock, the residual cane-waste (bagasse) is used to process heat and power, which results in a very competitive price and also in a high energy balance (output energy/input energy), which varies from 8.3 for average conditions to 10.2 for best practice production.[9]The Brazilian ethanol program provided nearly one million jobs in 2007, and cut 1975–2002 oil imports by a cumulative undiscounted total of US$50 billion.[10] The production of ethanol is concentrated in the Central and Southeast regions of the country, which includes the main producer, São Paulo State. These two regions were responsible for almost 90% of Brazil's ethanol production in 2004.[9]
There are no longer light vehicles in Brazil running on pure gasoline. Since 1977 the government made it mandatory to blend 20% of ethanol with gasoline...
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