One of the many mandates of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 calls for oil companies to increase the amount of ethanol mixed with gasoline. During his 2006 State of the Union Address, President Bush said, “America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world.” Let’s look at some of the “wonders” of ethanol as a replacement for gasoline. Ethanol contains water that distillation cannot remove. As such, it can cause major damage to automobile engines not specifically designed to burn ethanol. The water content of ethanol also risks pipeline corrosion and thus must...
