Research conducted by two Professors of Iowa State University, Jacek Koziel and Hans van Leeuwen, reports about producing food-grade alcohol from fuel ethanol for its addition to beverages, pharmaceuticals and personal care products.
The study claims that conversion of fuel ethanol to food-grade alcohol would get the purification costs of alcohol distillation down to less than a penny per gallon and expand the applicability of food grade alcohol to other consumer products apart from liquor. Fact provided by the research points out that ethanol in its crude form is extracted from sugar and starch in crops and has impurities, which needs to be distilled before using it in beverages and other food products.
Though researchers assert that ethanol can be purified at reasonable rates with the help of ozone gas, there has been no facts or evidence to report such a claim. In addition to what the beverage industry can consider as an assumption, there are facts pointing out that ethanol when enters the body reduces the anti-oxidant capacity of the body.
Taking into consideration the rate of consumption of alcoholic beverages, ethanol might prove to be quite hazardous to health, at a phase when beers and wines are going organic and sugar-free with consumers unbothered to pay higher price to indulge in them. Moreover food-grade ethanol is not anew concept, though nobody ever came up with the idea of cheaper purification of this fuel to be used in beverage and other products. Whatever the idea might be it is not a very fair one for recreational drinks and personal care products.
