STATUS OF LARGE SCALE PRODUCTION AND USE OF FUEL ETHANOL IN BRAZIL

摘要

In Brazil, the sugarcane is an important component of the energy matrix of the country (10% of the total demand), by the participations of the ethanol and of the sugarcane bagasse (sugarcane fiber). Since 1975, with the National Alcohol Program, the agribusiness of the sugarcane has been entirely modified, establishing the ethanol as main product and the sugar coming next; productivity gains with technology, modern management and production scale gains allow, in Brazil, competitiveness of the ethanol in relation to the gasoline; as a renewable fuel, whether it is additive of the gasoline or pure fuel, the ethanol caused positive environmental impacts in the country (lower emissions of the vehicles) as well as globally (reduction of the global CO2 emissions); as a social effect, hundreds of thousands of direct employments have been generated with a much lower investment in the rural area, valorizing the agro-industrial chain of the sugarcane; as important contribution, the by-products as the sugarcane leaves and the bagasse are transformed in electric power and the treated waters and the vinasse, that is an excellent product for ferti-irrigation, being approved for the production of organic sugar. One tries to show these socioeconomic and environmental effects and the expectations of the new technologies for transport, as the fuel cell, where the ethanol has a preponderant role. In this same line, one tries to show the apprenticeship of the 25 years of production and large scale use of the ethanol, as well as to list the main participating agents. With the consumption of 200 thousand barrels per day, in gasoline equivalent, the ethanol represents 40% of the consumption of the so-called Otto Cycle (gasoline and ethanol) utilized in the light vehicles and allows that in Brazil there is no gasoline consumption but rather only "gasohol"(with 20 to 24 % of anhydrous ethanol) and a fleet of roughly 3 million vehicles operated only by ethanol, in an agricultural area that represents only 1 % of the agriculture-usable area of Brazil.