First Ethanol is ethyl alcohol. Just like Methanol is methyl alcohol, and isopropanol is isopropyl alcohol. They're not "derived" from the other, any more than moisture is "derived" from water. How a major news figure in the biofuel industry could screw that up is beyond me.
But lets get to the second, and much more important part, the sources of ethanol. The Muslim cleric is opening up a can of worms here that could plummet muslim countries back into the stone age. Let's ignore the fact, for a moment, that hundreds of everyday chemicals are technically "alcohols" including a little something or other in pretty much every food we eat. Let's ignore, also that ethanol is a common cleaning ingredient, and therefore is found in trace amounts on almost every surface of every product sold.
What we cannot ignore is that one source of industrial ethanol comes from deep inside the ground. Crude oil. That's right crude oil is a mix of hundreds of chemicals. To be useful for anything but a lubricant, these chemicals must be separated. The easiest way is to use their different boiling points in a process called fractional distillation.
Distillation works a bit like boiling the water off a pan of rice, the rice stays and the water goes elsewhere. FD does the same thing but on a much more complicated scale. None of the chemicals are changed, they're just separated so that you can get to a more pure version of one or more, easily. But like the rice where you can't really get rid of all the water, you can't get an absolutely pure version of a chemical through distillation.
Since one of the chemicals in all crude oil is ethanol, and nothing can be completely removed through distillation, ALL petrol distillates have some tiny percentage of ethanol in them. Therefore, this declaration does the reverse of what it was clearly intended to do. It also removes Muslims from the Petrol industry and everything to do with crude or distilled oil.
So, ban ethanol if you must, but it won't save the OPEC nations, it will devastate them. This also assumes that anyone takes the proclamation seriously. Remember a Fatwa only applies to that particular cleric's followers. Various clerics have been tossing fatwas around like monopoly money for years now and I doubt anyone is paying attention. Here's a list of some famous ones.
Muslim cleric decries biofuels as sinful
February 20, 2009
Islamic scholar calls for further study as he notes that any use of alcohol is prohibited, even as fuel.
Adaptation of biofuels could be limited in Muslim communities after an Islamic scholar yesterday called for religious groups to study whether biofuels violate the ban on alcohol in the religion.
Sheik Mohamed al-Najimi of the Saudi Islamic Jurisprudence Academy told the the Saudi newspaper Shams that the prophet Mohammed prohibited all dealings with alcohol—which would include buying, selling, transporting, drinking, serving and manufacturing.
Ethanol is derived from ethyl alcohol, which al-Najimi said would fall into the prohibited category. In the process to make ethanol, sugar or starch from plants is converted into ethyl alcohol through yeast fermentation (see Tweaking corn genes to boost biofuel yields).
Biofuel "is basically made up of alcohol," he said.
Al-Najimi said his opinion on biofuels should not be considered a fatwa, or a legal pronouncement in Islam, but should prompt Islamic leaders to study the issue.
Al-Najimi said he thinks a ban on biofuels should extend beyond predominately Muslim countries to include Saudi and Muslim youth studying abroad who ride in vehicles using biofuel. Many Western and Eastern governments have established mandates for biofuel to be blended in petroleum based fuel in increasing percentages (see India, EU affirm new biofuels and Ethanol blend increases while oil reaches new low).
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