E85 tops gasoline

(Article posted to Green Car Congress by Bill Cooke)

Engineering firm Ricardo and Growth Energy, a trade association promoting the use of ethanol fuel, are collaborating on two demonstrator vehicles incorporating Ricardo’s Ethanol Boosted Direct Injection (EBDI) engine technology (earlier post) showing that even for larger vehicles extreme optimization of ethanol combustion can enable engine downsizing of the order of 50% and still deliver substantial fuel economy and CO2 emission improvements from a cost-effective, high performance, inherently low emission powertrain.

Based on test work already carried out, Ricardo estimates that a fuel economy improvement of up to 30% is possible with no loss of power or performance, using a downsized EBDI engine in place of currently available gasoline powertrain technology.

full story at:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2010/01/ricardo-and-growth-energy-collaborate-on-first-vehiclebased-demonstration-of-ricardos-ethanol-booste.html

Our Take:
Even Detroit engineers admitted for years that their flex fuel cars, vans and trucks had to be optimized for low or no-ethanol gasoline, because that’s what most gas stations offered. The result was an average 15 percent reduction in mileage using E85 compared to gasoline.

Now, someone has finally produced an engine that harnesses ethanol’s unique alcohol fuel chemistry—call it the ethanol paradox—despite lower BTUs than gasoline it appears to be able to deliver more usable energy when the engine is designed with ethanol in mind. Perhaps it is the much higher level of oxygen in the fuel, which pumps the octane up 15 or 20 points compared to unleaded regular gasoline.

Today, ten years after flexible fuel vehicles hit the market, we’ve got more than a thousand E85 locations in the upper Midwest alone, and momentum behind federal and state investment in more infrastructure—this kind of infrastructure can support the commercial release of ethanol-optimized vehicles. They would still run on gas but they run better on high ethanol blends.

Ricardo, one of the most respected private engineering firms serving Detroit’s Big Three, has developed what it calls the EBDI flexible fuel engine. In tests running E40, EBDI saw a mileage GAIN of more than ten percent over gasoline performance. In other words, they pump high blend ethanol performance up 25 percent over the average current flex fuel models. We think there’s even more upside to be had when the capital really starts flowing into this new generation of flexible fuel technology.

A thank you goes to Growth Energy, the ethanol advocacy group, for being a financial partner in the EBDI research.