Gas 2.0

Ford says the next generation of their Ecoboost engine technology, codenamed Bobcat, will provide 30% more fuel efficiency than a traditional gasoline combustion engine by directly injecting ethanol into the gas/air mixture prior to detonation.

Although Ford’s first generation Ecoboost engines start hitting the market next year — promising a 20% gain in fuel economy over traditional engines — Ford is already tweaking their new Bobcat technology to squeeze out even more fuel efficiency from the direct ethanol injection system.

The technology works by merging a turbocharger with a high compression ratio in the same engine. Combining these two features normally results in an incompatible and disastrous mix which causes premature detonation of the fuel/air mixture — referred to as engine knock.

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Editor’s note: Part three of Alexis Madrigal’s series on California’s ethanol mandate focuses on the challenges of transporting the fuel.

III. How to Move A Billion Gallons of Fuel from Iowa to California

Back in the 1980s, with smog choking American cities, the government decided to tinker with the gasoline hydrocarbon formula to create cleaner burning fuels. The easiest way to do that is to add a little oxygen to the gas. Adding O2 is a little like blowing on a flame: the controlled fire inside your car’s engine burns a little more efficiently and thus a little cleaner, reducing toxic air pollutants, carbon monoxide, and ozone.

Spurred by state and Federal regulations but committed to selling the most petroleum they could, oil companies found the cheapest oxygenate they could, a crude-derived chemical called MTBE. Subsequent environmental impact studies determined that MTBE was a groundwater pollutant, and in 1999, then-Governor Gray Davis ruled that all MTBE had to be removed from California’s gasoline by the end of 2002 (though the phase out was extended).

That left the state casting around for an alternative way to get extra oxygen into its gasoline blend while maintaining the smog-control benefits of the previous blend, and quick. They settled on ethanol, the only scaleable oxygenate available.

“This actually was a major shift in a lot of different things. The phase out was something extremely rapid. It required [the oil industry] to use the only other oxygenate alternative, which was ethanol,” says Rahul Iyer, a founder of the biofuels infrastructure startup Primafuel.

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Editor’s note: On July 10th, I asked if you’d be interested in “crowdfunding” a feature article on meeting ethanol mandates in California.  You were: within two days, enough money was donated so that Spot.us, a new venture dedicated to crowdfunded reporting, was able to commission Wired.com staff writer Alexis Madrigal to move forward with his article.

We’re proud to be the first media source to publish Alexis’ article.  It will run as a five-part series: three parts published here on Gas 2.0, and the other two on Ecolocalizer.

I. How to Take Some Oil Out of An Energy System — Fast

“Don’t change horses in midstream.”
–aphorism based on 1864 Abraham Lincoln speech

What happens if, all of a sudden, you need to change the entire energy infrastructure on which California’s transportation system runs?

Most Californians probably haven’t noticed, but that’s exactly what a combination of Midwestern farmers, Big Oil companies, railroad operators, and fuel terminal owners have done over the last decade.

In switching out MTBE, a former component of California gasoline, in favor of ethanol, a behind-the-scenes change of huge proportions took place. The state and its industrial infrastructure companies managed to start putting a billion gallons of ethanol into our gas tanks a year, without anyone really noticing.

“Gasoline is just one component in what is legislated to be motor fuel. You can’t sell it without the ethanol,” says John Mahon, who runs renewable fuels for Kinder Morgan, a key player in California’s liquid fuels market. “Ethanol becomes a critical path.”

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In concert with the opening of the Democratic National Convention in Denver, the American Corn Growers Association (ACGA) has announced their endorsement of Barack Obama for President of the United States.

This marks the first endorsement by a major biofuels trade association in the 2008 US presidential campaign, and only the second time in the ACGA’s twenty-one year history that they have ever endorsed any presidential candidate.

The American Corn Growers Association represents 14,000 members in 35 states. Keith Bolin ACGA president and a corn and hog farmer in Obama’s home state of Illinois issued a simultaneously glowing endorsement of Obama and blistering critique of McCain.

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According to the Nikkei Business Daily (via Tradingmarkets.com), Japan’s Suzuki Motor Company will begin selling cars that run completely on 100% ethanol in the US and Brazil by 2010. The company will begin the transition by first offering an E25 sedan for sale in Brazil this coming March.

Currently the most ethanol that a flex-fuel car can run on in the US is E85 — which is an 85% ethanol/15% gasoline blend. Suzuki’s move would mark a huge development in ethanol-powered vehicles, and a huge shift for Suzuki, which hasn’t had any alternative fuel-specific offerings in its lineup to this point.

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Most of us agree that the Kelley Blue Book is the quintessential guide to new and used vehicle information.  Now, they’ve moved into the “Green” world with the launch of Kelley Blue Book Green, a guide for shoppers who want the latest information on alternative fuel technologies.

Everything you want to know about hydrogen, diesel, hybrid, natural gas, electric, flex fuel/ethanol and fuel-sipping gasoline cars is included.  There’s a video section which gives the reader an in-depth look at the latest eco-friendly vehicles out there, and even features a section it calls the Perfect Car Finder.

Read on, the top ten green vehicles, according to KBBGreen, is next.

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That’s 195,000 Vehicles.

The U.S. Postal service is looking to move away from petroleum based fuels as quickly as possible since, as Environmental Leader reports, a 1-cent increase in a gallon of fuel costs them an additional $8 million annually.

It looks like USPS will be getting a free fuel-cell test-vehicle from GM’s Project Driveway, which is providing select customers around the country with Equinox Fuel-Cell vehicles. Read the rest of this entry »

According to an article in the Jakarta Post, an official from the Indonesian government has spilled the beans on Samsung’s plans to invest up to $1.63 billion dollars in what’s sure to be a controversial acquisition of land for growing oil palms and construction of a biodiesel plant in Indonesia.

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Bonnie Prince Charles, in a symbolic gesture, has converted his 38 year old Aston Martin rag top to run on ethanol, derived from English Wine.   Aides said the action was due to the pattern of Royal trips set by the Foreign Office.

Prince Charles Chief Aide, Sir Michael Peat is quoted as saying:

‘Charles only travelled two or three hundred miles a year in the Aston but he wanted it to be environmentally friendly. It just happened that our bioethanol supplier makes the fuel from surplus English wine.’

The Prince has been reducing his carbon footprint, already cutting carbon emissions by 12.5 percent, in line with the Government’s Kyoto target.  He has since doubled the target to a 25 percent reduction in emissions by 2018. Read the rest of this entry »

First Flex-Fuel Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle

As part of a push by the US Department of Energy (DOE) to make plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) cost competitive with other cars by 2014, Ford has delivered a plug-in hybrid electric flex-fuel Escape to the DOE to join its test fleet of other PHEVs currently undergoing research and testing.

The vehicle is equipped with a 10 kilowatt lithium ion battery that can take it up to 30 miles at speeds under 40 mph before needing to fire up its fuel-fed hybrid-electric engine. After that, the hybrid-electric engine kicks in and can deliver a fuel economy of 88 mpg in the city and 50 mpg on the highway when using E85 (85% ethanol/15% gasoline blend).

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