MP3Guy

Startup Working to Commercialize Direct Injection Ethanol Boosting + Turbocharging

25 October 2006

Ethanol boost with turbocharging promises a cost-effective means to obtain high fuel efficiency in gasoline and flex ethanol/gasoline powered engines. MIT scientists and engineers earlier this year founded a company—Ethanol Boosting Systems, LLC (EBS)—to commercialize their work on direct-injection ethanol boosting combined with aggressive turbocharging in a gasoline engine. (Earlier post.) The result is a gasoline engine with the fuel efficiency of current hybrids or turbodiesels—up to 30% better than a conventional gasoline engine—but at lower cost.
EBS has a collaborative R&D agreement with Ford, and anticipates engine tests in 2007 with subsequent licensing to Ford and other automakers. If all goes as expected, vehicles with the new engine could be on the road by 2011.
The foundation of the approach is the enhanced knock suppression resulting from the separate, direct injection of small amounts of ethanol into the cylinder in addition to the main gasoline fuel charge.
Efforts to improve the efficiency of the conventional spark-ignition (SI) gasoline engine have been stymied by a barrier known as the knock limit. Changes that would have made the engine far more efficient would have caused knock (spontaneous combustion).
The injection of a small amount of ethanol into the hot combustion chamber cools the fuel charge and makes spontaneous combustion much less likely. According to a simulation developed by the MIT group, with ethanol injection the engine won’t knock even when the pressure inside the cylinder is three times higher than that in a conventional SI engine. Engine tests by collaborators at Ford Motor Company produced results consistent with the model’s predictions.
With knock essentially eliminated, the researchers could incorporate into their engine two operating techniques that help make today’s diesel engines so efficient: a high degree of turbocharging and the use of a higher compression ratio.
The engine would operate with a wide range of ethanol consumption from a minimum of less than 5% up to 100%. A knock sensor would determine when ethanol is needed to prevent knock. During the brief periods of high-torque operation, fractions of up to 100% ethanol could be used. For much of the drive cycle, vehicles are operated at low torque and there is no need for the use of ethanol.
The combined changes could increase the power of a given-sized engine by more than a factor of two. But rather than seeking higher vehicle performance, the MIT researchers cut their engine size in half. Using well-established computer models, they determined that their small, turbocharged, high-compression-ratio engine will provide the same peak power as the full-scale SI version but will be 20 to 30% more fuel efficient.
The ethanol-boosted engine could provide efficiency gains comparable to those of today’s hybrid engine systems for less extra investment: about $1,000 as opposed to $3,000 to $5,000. The engine should use less than five gallons of ethanol for every 100 gallons of gasoline, so drivers would need to fill their ethanol tank only every one to three months. The ethanol used could be E85.
Given the short fuel-savings payback time—three to four years at present US gasoline prices—the MIT researchers believe that their ethanol-boosted turbo engine has real potential for widespread adoption.

Brettus

iTrader: (2)

wow - that sounds great . Hope Mazda are reading this ......

Wilson

When you think about using this technology in the Renesis, it makes sense. The biggest problem Mazda had with the rotary was getting it to pass emissions testing. Using ethanol enjection, they could raise the compression ratio and lean out the engine. Turbo or SC for boost. We could get a lot more power from the engine with less fuel burned.

Who knows? Maybe MazdaManiac would even stop blowing rotor seals out his exhaust.

nycgps

iTrader: (1)

but can we even get Ethanol pumps by 2015 ? consider the fact that this country is running by oil companies ...

not to mention is really hard to teach morons ... well general customers that they need to *put ethanol* into another tank every other fillups ... just like Mazda knows its better to put premix ... sadly Mazda has no choice but to use engine oil instead.

NoTears316

+1 You cant even stop a lot of people from dumping 86, 87 octane sludge into their 8's now. What's gonna convince them to put ethanol in it?

MP3Guy

Actually, I think this solves or helps solve, the Ethanol distribution problem. The problem with all of these lovely new technologies is that while many of them actually work, distribution is a bigger problem than production. If you only have to fill a feeder tank every three months or so, you don't need pipelines or pumps. You can buy this stuff at the local gas station or grocery store in a sealed bottle used for cooking oils.

The engine should use less than five gallons of ethanol for every 100 gallons of gasoline, so drivers would need to fill their ethanol tank only every one to three months. The ethanol used could be E85.

kartweb

Excellent idea for piston engines, I hope it shows as much promise for the rotary.

Detonation characteristics for a rotary differ due to combustion chamber shape. There are still some fundimental design changes to the combustion chamber to overcome for a rotary to approach the efficiency of a piston engine. I think that will come in time. The investment in piston technology has probably outnumbered rotary technology by 10,000:1 over the last 100 years.

With Mazda being the only manufacturer with a dog in the hunt, and at that with a barely 5 figure annual production rate there just isn't a lot of dough to put into a serious combustion chamber development effort. They do the best they can, and we get what we get.

On the other hand the cost of the rotary is pretty reasonable, and it provides a package that no piston motor will achieve in the next century. That is the key to why the RX8 is such a fantastic handling car.

I'll live with 20 MPG and 180 HP to the wheels, it works just fine. I have a feeling we'll be seeing a slow rise of E85 over the next 10 years along with a cost that becomes equal to "E0" on a BTU basis. I trust my next new rotary car will run on E85.

MP3Guy

I will be quite happy if we can get 98% of the cars on the road running on E-85.

lone_wolf025

That starts happening I'm gonna buy a farm and start growing corn.

Ajax

we'll all need to.. because there's not gonna be enough damn corn to eat!

lone_wolf025

That and you KNOW the government's gonna be just dumping money at all the corn growers...

Tigerfootball

this sounds really cool. but you know, since our government is in the pocket of oil companies, i am wondering how far it will actually go before something happens that puts the E85 technology on the back burner to oil company greed. and as long as i still have my corn to eat, i will be happy.

PoorCollegeKid

The big problem with E85 is in the supply. Food corn is a pretty terrible ethanol source, and other sources are either not viable in the US (sugarcane) or are still in development and won't be ready for large scale use for quite some time (cellulosic ethanol). This is why the use of what is nominally E15 (assuming that regular pump gas is E10, which is currently is in my neck of the woods) to cut gasoline consumption by 20-30% is being heavily researched, and is why wide scale use of E85 isn't going to happen any time in the next decade or two unless something drastic occurs. This isn't due to the oil companies (Shell, in fact, is researching non-feed-corn based ethanol production, and most of the others are likely doing the same) but rather the drawbacks of ethanol supply and transportation.

BaronVonBigmeat

Ethanol sucks dead donkey *****, you could plow under all the farmland in america and it still wouldn't be enough. And even if you make it out of algae or something, it's still a shitty fuel. Butanol is the new hotness--it has nearly the same energy density as gasoline, higher octane than gas, and best of all it runs through existing pipelines and burns in existing car without modification, unlike ethanol. It's also backed by BP and DuPont.

rotarygod

This is nothing more than auxiliary injection such as water injection except they are using Ethanol. The main difference is that they are direct injecting it. They'd take care of so many other issues if they'd just direct inject the gas too. Lots of people run auxiliary injection. Why is it that many people frown on it for street use until some scientist backs it up?

Ajax

Isn't that what your buddy does with Methanol?

rotarygod

Basically but without the direct injection part. It works for him. He gets good power numbers. Most people wouldn't want to deal with it on the street though. Then again most people also wouldn't drive a bridgeport on the street either!

MP3Guy

This butanol seems interesting. But I think Ethanol will probably be more common for some time to come.

The potential problems with the use of butanol are similar to those of ethanol:

• To match the combustion characteristics of gasoline, the utilization of butanol fuel as a substitute for gasoline requires fuel-flow increases (though butanol has only slightly less energy than gasoline, so the fuel-flow increase required is only minimal, maybe 10%, compared to 40% for ethanol.)
• Alcohol-based fuels are not compatible with some fuel system components.
• Alcohol fuels may cause erroneous gas gauge readings in vehicles with capacitance fuel level gauging.
• The viscosity of butanol is much higher than for gasoline or ethanol, which could have negative effects on the fuel system.
• While ethanol and methanol have lower energy densities than butanol, their higher octane number allows for greater compression ratio and efficiency. Higher combustion engine efficiency allows for lesser greenhouse gas emissions per unit motive energy extracted.
• As an advantage, butanol production from biomass could be more efficient (i.e. unit engine motive power delivered per unit solar energy consumed) than ethanol or methanol routes. Also, the bacterium producing butanol is able to digest cellulose, not just starch and sugars.

rotarygod

Those lesser greenhouse gasses per unit motive are completely cancelled out by the fact that you need to burn more of those fuels to get the same distance. Butanol has an advantage here.

NotAPreppie

From what I've read, cellulose-based ethanol promises to be much more efficient to produce.

One of the big problems with corn-based ethanol is the amount of energy (typically in the form of fossil fuels) and fresh water required to process it.

Buy large weed patches and furniture factories instead.