You can already fill your car's tank with ethanol, but you may soon be able to fill your shot glass as well. Two Iowa State University profes-sors are searching for a cheap and easy way to turn ethanol fuel into food-grade alcohol to be used in beverages, pharmaceuticals, and per-sonal care products.

The obvious question is, why?

Professors Hans van Leeuwen and Jacek Koziel anticipate that the automotive industry could embrace fuels other than ethanol, but "the demand for liquor and mouthwashes and cough syrups will always be there," said Leeuwen, a civil, construction and environmental engineer-ing professor. As fuel-ethanol production climbs, companies can use surplus production to turn food-grade alcohol into big business.

Their research is focused on perfecting technologies that purify fuel ethanol, a grain alcohol most often made from corn and used as a gasoline additive. Fuel ethanol is yeast-fermented, then distilled like beverage alcohol, but has many more impurities to remove. The key is to keep the production price down, so that food-grade ethanol produc-tion will pay for itself in less than a year. For liquor lovers, van Leeu-wen has said food-grade ethanol "tastes just like vodka."

Via AutoBlog Green.

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