Research on the Application of Hydrous-ethanol for Automobiles

Amid growing concerns about unstable oil supplies and the impact of fossil fuels on global warming, biofuels are receiving increased attention. Ethanol biofuel could play an important role in reducing fossil fuels consumption and greenhouse gas emissions when applying to the transport facilities. At the present time, there is a variety of types from E100 to E5 ethanol fuels which are mature in the market, specially in Brazil and USA. But all need anhydrous ethanol (99.5%) which takes a lot of non-renewable energy and then results in CO2 emissions during further distillation process from hydrous-ethanol. In this paper, a hydrous-ethanol boost engine approach, where hydrous-ethanol is reformed to hydrogen-rich mixture gas which is an excellent fuel for engines, is discussed. The advantages of this approach are that fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions are reduced, and the waste heat from engine exhaust can be used as energy source for hydrous-ethanol evaporating and reforming. The experiment is carried out on a gasoline engine as primary engine with only modest changes. The results indicate that the hydrogen-rich mixture gas allows operation at much higher compression ratio due to its intrinsic octane number which could contribute to the power performance, and the NOx, CO, THC emissions are reduced remarkably because of lean combustion realized in the cylinder.