Drive Your Car On Tequila!

Pulse

oi-Staff

Friday, March 5, 2010, 11:44

Here's a quiz for you-A drink from this plant fuels wild night parties. This plant also causes addiction to many people. Now, some researchers have found out that this plant can also fuel internal combustion engines in a car! Can you name this plat? Yes, this plant is nothing other than the Agave tequilana, which fuels tequila madness.

Agave, which is used to make the potent spirit, is one of the most water-efficient plants in the world and has the potential to create ethanol. Researchers are now trying to assess the succulent plant's potential to serve as an alternative raw material for ethanol production units located around sugar mills.

The experiment to create ethanol out of Agve tequilana is happening at queensland. The sugar mills in this area will work for six months in a year. For the remaining six months in a year, the infrastructure in the mills is unutilized. The researchers are planning to use the infrastructure during these idle months to produce ethanol.

Agave shows real promise here in Australia as both a second-generation biofuel, and an opportunity for Australian farmers in the face of global climate change. Agave could yield 16,000 liters of ethanol per hectare annually, as compared to the 10,000 liters for sugar cane. Agave would not deplete existing food production or push up world food prices, unlike other sources of ethanol, such as corn.

Researchers in southeast queensland conduct this study. They might take about three years to prove the concept, but they are confident of its future, depending on fuel price movements.