In quest for greater efficiency in ICE's ethanol (& methanol) could provide a much needed boost [View all]

[Bill USA]

http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/alcoholengines.aspx

If a 650 horsepower IndyCar Series race car can run on 100 percent ethanol, without compromising performance or safety, so can a personal automobile or truck. Forget any negative criticisms you may have heard about corn ethanol and listen to the truth—Alcohol is a better fuel than gasoline.

100% alcohol is a superior fuel for spark ignition internal combustion engines; but only if the engine is optimized to run on alcohol. The flex-fuel E-85 cars and trucks available today have gasoline engines that are not optimized to use alcohol.

[font color="blue"]“The Flex-Fuel Vehicles (FFVs) produced today, use fairly typical gasoline engines, which, because they must retain dual-fuel capability, are not able to take full advantage of the favorable combustion characteristics of alcohols.
“Engines optimized for alcohol fuel use, on the other hand, may yield efficiencies that exceed that of state-of-the-art diesel engines—or, about one third higher than that of FFV engines. In earlier engine research at EPA with neat [100%] methanol and ethanol, for example, over 40% brake thermal efficiency was achieved over a relatively broad range of loads and speeds, with peak levels reaching over 42%. Similar work has also been performed with E85, yielding up to 20% fuel economy improvement over baseline gasoline engines.”[/font]

Economical, High-Efficiency Engine Technologies for Alcohol Fuels size: 134 Kb - 10 pages
— By Matthew Brusstar, U.S. EPA National Vehicle and Fuel Emissions Laboratory, and Marco Bakenhus, FEV Engine Technology, Inc.

Ethanol Engine efficiency exceeds gasoline engines, giving greater miles per gallon (MPG) with ethanol fuel:
High Efficiency and Low Emissions from a Port-Injected Engine with Alcohol Fuels
— By Matthew Brusstar, Mark Stuhldreher, David Swain and William Pidgeon, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency size: 70 Kb - 7 pages
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