Ethanol

Ethanol /ˈɛθənɒl/, also commonly called ethyl alcohol, drinking alcohol, or simply alcohol is the principal type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages, produced by the fermentation of sugars by yeasts. It is a neurotoxicpsychoactive drug and one of the oldest recreational drugs used by humans. It can cause alcohol intoxication when consumed in sufficient quantity.

Ethanol is a volatile, flammable, colorless liquid with a slight chemical odor. It is used as an antiseptic, a solvent, a fuel, and, due to its low freezing point, the active fluid in post-mercury thermometers. The molecule is a simple one, being an ethyl group linked to a hydroxyl group. Its structural formula, CH
3CH
2OH, is often abbreviated as C
2H
5OH, C
2H
6O or EtOH.

Etymology

Ethanol is the systematic name defined by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) for a molecule with two carbon atoms (prefix "eth-"), having a single bond between them (suffix "-ane"), and an attached functional group-OH group (suffix "-ol").

Ethanol (data page)

This page provides supplementary chemical data on ethanol. Except where noted otherwise, data relate to standard ambient temperature and pressure.

Material Safety Data Sheet

External MSDS

Structure and properties

Thermodynamic properties

Spectral data

Vapor pressure of liquid

Density of ethanol at various temperatures (kg/l or g/cm³)

Data obtained from Lange's Handbook of Chemistry, 10th ed.

These data correlate as Density (g/cm³) = -8.461834E-4 T( °C) + 0.8063372 with an R² coefficient of determination of 0.99999.

Properties of aqueous ethanol solutions

Data obtained from Lange's Handbook of Chemistry, 10th ed. The annotation, d a °C/b °C, indicates density of solution at temperature a divided by density of pure water at temperature b.

Boiling points of aqueous solutions

Data obtained from CRC Handbook of Chemistry 44th ed., p2391

^‡Azeotropic mixture

Charts

References

Ethanol fuel

Ethanol fuel is ethyl alcohol, the same type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages. It is most often used as a motor fuel, mainly as a biofuel additive for gasoline. The first production car running entirely on ethanol was the Fiat 147, introduced in 1978 in Brazil by Fiat. Nowadays, cars are able to run using 100% ethanol fuel or a mix of Ethanol and gasoline (aka flex-fuel). It is commonly made from biomass such as corn or sugarcane. World ethanol production for transport fuel tripled between 2000 and 2007 from 17 billion to more than 52 billion liters. From 2007 to 2008, the share of ethanol in global gasoline type fuel use increased from 3.7% to 5.4%. In 2011 worldwide ethanol fuel production reached 22.36 billion U.S. liquid gallons (bg) (84.6 billion liters), with the United States as the top producer with 13.9 bg (52.6 billion liters), accounting for 62.2% of global production, followed by Brazil with 5.6 bg (21.1 billion liters). Ethanol fuel has a "gasoline gallon equivalency" (GGE) value of 1.5 US gallons (5.7 L), which means 1.5 gallons of ethanol produces the energy of one gallon of gasoline.