One of the criticisms of ethanol as a vehicle fuel is that fuel economy is reduced due to the lower BTU content of a gallon of ethanol vs. gasoline. However, a recent research study has shown ethanol blends of up to E30 may actually improve fuel economy for cars on the road today!
The research was performed by the University of North Dakota Energy and Environmental Research Center and the Minnesota Center for Automotive Research. Their report is titled Optimal Ethanol Blend Level Investigation.
The testing was performed using four cars, all 2007 models, a Toyota Camry, a Ford Fusion, a regular fuel Chevrolet Impala and a flex-fuel Chevrolet Impala. The vehicles were tested using the U.S. EPA fuel economy test procedures and they were also tested using the EPA standard emission tests for pollutants. The vehicles were each tested using regular gasoline, ethanol blends at 10% intervals up to E70 and E85. Here are some of the more interesting findings:
- Three of the four cars had better fuel economy at either E20 or E30 than with regular gas. The best was the flex-fuel Impala, which had an improvement of 15% on E20. The others has a small improvement on E30.
- All of the cars has significantly reduced emissions on higher ethanol blends.
- The non-flex-fuel cars were able to run and perform without problems on blends of up to E45.
What I take from this is that cars on the road today could run on ethanol blends up to around E30 without a loss of fuel economy or performance and flex-fuel designed vehicles may even have improved fuel economy. The U.S. currently consumes 400 million gallons of gas per day. Replacing 25% of gasoline with ethanol would reduce annual gasoline consumption by 40 billion gallons, and probably send the Saudis to the poor house!
The report said the government should do further testing to confirm the results of this relatively small sample. If the results are verified it could be very good news for the ethanol industry.
Source: Alternative Energy News
One Trackback
[...] Note: A recent study has indicated ethanol/gasoline blends of E20 to E30 may actually increase fuel economy of cars on the road today. I wrote about it here. [...]