AT THE Le Mans 24-hour endurance race last weekend one car stood out from the crowd. It wasn鈥檛 just the distinctive green and black livery, or even the 快猫短视频 logo emblazoned across its bodywork that made it special. The Team Nasamax car is the first car to complete the race powered by bioethanol alone.
快猫短视频鈥檚 backing for the car is less about motorsport than supporting the modest aim of its creator, John McNeil, in raising public awareness of renewable fuels. It certainly demonstrates that bioethanol-fuelled cars do not have to compromise on performance.
Bioethanol is 98.5 per cent alcohol with a dash of water, and additives to make it undrinkable. Its advantages over petroleum-based fuels are clear. It releases no particulates, emissions of carbon monoxide are reduced typically by 35 per cent and nitrogen oxides by up to 20 per cent. More importantly, because it is made from plants, which soak up carbon dioxide, bioethanol is closer than other fuels to being carbon dioxide neutral.
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Using bioethanol rather than petrol requires a number of design changes. The main difference between the fuels is that bioethanol has only two-thirds the energy density of petrol. This means the car must carry 50 per cent more fuel and to get the power equivalent of a petrol engine, higher rates of fuel flow are required so modifications are needed to the fuel delivery system. Also, the pistons and cylinders are altered so that more fuel can be burnt on each firing.
The view from the Le Mans pit lane showed the car to be more than fast enough to hold its own. During the race it clocked a top speed of 318 kilometres per hour, the second-fastest of the 49 competitors. But it was not all plain sailing. Just 45 minutes into the race, an intermittent electrical fault made the engine misfire, reducing acceleration. A long pit stop had engineers pulling their hair out and left the car languishing in 48th place for a while, though it eventually recovered to finish a respectable 17th out of 28 finishers.
Bioethanol is far from being a new fuel. At one point in the late 1980s, three-quarters of cars being made in Brazil were designed to run on pure bioethanol. As oil prices dropped during the 1990s, the number of production models fell to zero. But today, the country is going through a bioethanol renaissance. The Brazilian government requires all petrol to be blended with 25 per cent bioethanol, and blending is also becoming popular in countries such as the US and Sweden. Many car manufacturers, including Ford, DaimlerChrysler and General Motors, produce cars that can run on blends of up to 85 per cent bioethanol and 15 per cent petrol.
It is unlikely that bioethanol will replace petrol completely. The amount of land needed to farm the fuel source, whether it is sugar cane, beat, wheat or maize, would be too great. And farming machinery tends to run on petrol or diesel, so the environmental benefits of the biofuel would be diluted.
Researchers are looking for cheap ways to manufacture 鈥渆co-ethanol鈥�, which uses organic waste instead of specially grown crops. It should be much more environmentally friendly and cheaper too, because it could use any cellulose-rich biomass, such as plant stems and even wood chips. In April, Iogen, an industrial enzyme maker in Ottawa, Canada, announced that it had opened the first bioethanol plant that uses enzymes to break down waste straw and wood chips into ethanol on a commercial scale. The plant itself can be powered by eco-ethanol.
It may be some time before the Nasamax car is powered by eco-ethanol, but if and when that happens there is no reason why it shouldn鈥檛 match the performance it achieved last weekend. Power and endurance don鈥檛 have to come at a high price for the environment.
