The Power of Ethanol: Unlocking Higher Compression Ratios and Increased Horsepower

A recent study performed by Ford showcased the potential of using ethanol as a fuel source to unlock higher compression ratios and increased horsepower. The study took a 3.5L direct injection turbocharged engine from an F-150 and subjected it to various fuels, including E10 and E85. By varying the boost levels with each fuel, the researchers aimed to find the optimal combination that could produce significant power gains without compromising the engine.

The results of this study are nothing short of impressive. When comparing E85 to E10, the maximum brake mean effective pressure (BMEP) at 5,000 RPM was significantly higher for E85. At 5,000 RPM, the maximum BMEP for E85 reached an astonishing 19.5 bar, whereas E10 struggled to reach only 9.9 bar. This translates to approximately 380 horsepower for E85, compared to a mere 190 horsepower for E10 - that's double the power! The key factor here is that E85 has a higher research octane number (108) than E10 (91), allowing the engine to run at a higher compression ratio (13:1) without risking engine damage.

Ford's study demonstrated the potential of using ethanol as a fuel source to unlock higher compression ratios and increased horsepower. The researchers found that by increasing the boost levels with each fuel, they could achieve significant power gains while still maintaining engine health. This is particularly notable in the area of efficiency improvements, where E85 was shown to offer up to 34% better thermal efficiencies than E10.

One of the most interesting findings from this study is the impact of ethanol on engine performance. When comparing pure gasoline (91 research octane number) to E10 (a blend stock with a lower energy content), it becomes clear that E10 results in worse fuel economy due to its lower energy density. This highlights the importance of using high-octane fuels when blending with ethanol, as this can significantly impact performance.

The study also shed light on the benefits of adding ethanol to gasoline. When transitioning from pure gasoline (91 research octane number) to a higher-octane blend stock (E20), the researchers found that efficiency improvements outweighed the energy density losses associated with using ethanol. In fact, the E20 blend offered a 1% mile per gallon improvement over pure gasoline. This is a remarkable finding, as it suggests that even small amounts of ethanol can have a significant impact on fuel efficiency.

The results of this study have profound implications for the automotive industry and motorists alike. As we move forward in an era where fuel efficiency and sustainability are becoming increasingly important, the use of ethanol as a fuel source offers a promising solution. By unlocking higher compression ratios and increased horsepower, ethanol-based fuels can help reduce emissions and improve overall performance.

The findings of this study serve as a reminder that the power potential of ethanol is often underestimated. By pushing the boundaries of engine technology and exploring new ways to harness the energy contained within ethanol, we may unlock significant gains in performance and efficiency. As research continues to advance, it's clear that the future of fuel will be shaped by innovative solutions like these, which can help us achieve a more sustainable transportation system.

As the automotive industry continues to evolve, it's essential that we stay at the forefront of innovation and exploration. The study conducted by Ford highlights the exciting possibilities that exist when it comes to using ethanol as a fuel source. By embracing new technologies and exploring alternative fuels, we may unlock significant gains in performance, efficiency, and sustainability - and pave the way for a cleaner, more efficient transportation system for generations to come.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: ena gallon of ethanol only has about 2/3 of the amount of energy as is stored in a gallon of gasoline and yet you can make more power using ethanol hello everyone and welcome in this video we're talking about why ethanol is capable of making such big Power numbers so the first thing we need to understand is that these two fuels have very different air fuel ratios so if we look at pure gasoline and other words e0 meaning 0% ethanol content it has an air fuel ratio by mass of 14 .7 Parts air to one part fuel if we look at pure ethanol E100 it has an air fuel ratio of 9 to1 so it's significantly lower meaning you're going to be using more ethanol for the same amount of air as you would with gasoline so the energy density by volume of gasoline 33.7 kwatt hours per gallon versus only 22.6 kwatt hours per gallon of ethanol so it's at about 67% of the energy content now if we look at energy density by Mass in other words the lower heating value well it's 12.21 kwatt hours of energy per kilogram of gasoline versus just 7.45 KW hours per kilogram of ethanol now here's the interesting thing so if we have an engine and within that cylinder we have 14.7 kg of air which yes is a lot uh it's just going to make our math simple that's why we're using that number well that means then we only need 1 kg of fuel because that's our air fuel ratio 14.7 to1 now Now ethanol on the other hand has a lower fuel ratio so we'll have to take that 14.7 divide it by 9 and that means we're going to need 1.63 kg of ethanol to put into that cylinder to have the ideal mixture with that fuel so now if we multiply our energy density by how much fuel is going in it that'll tell us the total amount of energy that will then be in that cylinder with the air and the fuel so we multiply 12.21 * 1 pretty easy 12.21 kilowatt hours within that cylinder and then for ethanol we multiply 7.45 by 1.63 and that gives us 12.17 so as you can see these are nearly identical so while it has less energy in it you inject more fuel within that cylinder for the same amount of air and thus they make very equal power assuming their thermal efficiencies are the same so if you need to use more fuel to make the same amount of power does this mean your fuel economy is trash yes now if you were to assume an engine could run on either fuel with equal thermal efficiency and it was getting 30 m per gallon using pure gasoline well it would get about 20 m per gallon using ethanol in other words gasoline giving a 50% Improvement in fuel economy Now consumer reports actually ran a test with a Chevy Tahoe and on E10 so regular pump gas they were getting 14 m per gallon versus using E85 they got just 10 m per gallon so in other words a a 40% real world Improvement in MPG using gasoline however ethanol has a greater thermal efficiency and ethanol can make much more power so versus gasoline ethanol has two big advantages and both of these relate to the fuel's octane number now the first part of this is a chemical property of ethanol so it's inherent to the fuel itself so if you take an engine that has a variable compression ratio and then you put a fuel within that engine and you compress it a certain amount and you start to see hey do we have any knock and you don't so you further increase that compression ratio and you say hey do we run into engine knock no and you don't so you keep going and you keep going and you keep going until you finally start to have knock and that gives you a way to compare the octane number of different fuels how much compression ratio can it handle before you start to run into knock so that is how research octane number is calculated and it's on a scale that gives you premium gasoline having an octane rating of about 97 you could be much lower than this uh for lower quality gasolines and then of course ethanol here at 109 for its octane rating so as you can see significantly higher meaning you can use higher compression ratios it is more resistant to knock now as you start to add ethanol into gasoline you increase the properties of gasoline uh to resist knock so that's what this plot here is looking at from a study which I found super interesting study and what it shows is that as you start to add that ethanol the initial increase in the octane number of the fuel is very dramatic but then by about 30 to 40% you no longer get any benefit from it so after about 40% there's no real benefit from a chemical standpoint of adding ethanol into gasoline to increase that octane number now whether you're using port injection or direct injection this Advantage exists because it's purely a property of the fuel itself however there is a cooling benefit that is much more prominent using direct injection all right this is awesome so we need to understand something called heat of vaporization so as we inject fuel into the cylinder that fuel is going to change from a liquid to a gas and it requires energy to do this in order to transform from a liquid to a gas so that fuel is pulling energy from the surrounding environment to create that phase change and in doing so it's cooling down that surrounding environment this is great because it means lower cylinder temperatures which means less likelihood for knock now if you're using direct injection that is all occurring directly within the cylinder so it's a much greater benefit than if you're doing that say in the intake and you're pulling from you know the intake environment to cool down rather than having it all occur within the cylinder so it's important where it occurs Now ethanol has an advantage in its heat of vaporization versus gasoline so if we look at that number for gasoline it's 305 KJ per kilogram of fuel versus ethanol it's 885 KJ per kilogram of fuel which you can see is much greater now keep in mind we're injecting even more fuel versus gasoline for the same amount of air so if we look at the heat of vaporization per kilogram of air fuel mixture that numbers even greater for ethanol so if you take 305 and you divide it by 14.7 + 1 that gives you 19.4 and if you take 885 and divide it by 9 + 1 well that gives you 88.5 and if you take this number and divide it by this number that means you have a 4.56 times Advantage as far as heat of vaporization now what does this translate to as far as a temperature drop well the maximum theoretical temperature drop for gasoline this 97 gasoline we're using here being 20° versus ethanol E100 80° temperature drop because of that heat of vaporization now this means you have a much cooler cylinder which means you've significantly reduced your chances for knock now this correlates with our octane number so we saw that there was a chemical benefit of adding a certain percentage of ethanol into our gasoline and that raises our octane number so that's the same plot we have drawn right here now we also have that cooling benefit which is in addition so that further raises to our total octane number which you can see drawn here so here is just from the chemical benefit and then as you can see the more ethanol you have because all of it will always always provide a heat of vaporization benefit The Wider that Gap occurs and you always get a benefit from having more ethanol within the fuel from a cooling standpoint now it's worth mentioning that this Advantage is much greater for direct injection because that's occurring within the cylinder than port injection so the chemical Advantage is true for both the total Advantage the cooling Advantage here is much more so for direct injection so because ethanol can provide a much higher octane number well it means you have more flexibility with your ignition timing it means you can run more boost and it means you can run higher compression ratios all of this meaning you can make more power so I found a really cool study performed by Ford where they took a 3.5 L direct injection turbocharged engine out of an F-150 and they put various fuels in it so two of those fuels being E10 as well as E85 and then they essentially cranked up the Boost with each of these different fuels until they ran into knock until they ran into engine problems so what we're looking at here on the bottom we have engine RPM on the left we have brake mean effective pressure if you're unfamiliar with brake mean effective pressure you can think of it as torque per liter and I'll do some helpful translating a little later on to help explain this but here we can see the curves of these two fuels right and as you can see E85 has a much greater torque per liter brake mean effective pressure than E10 so if we look at this point right here we have 5,000 RPM and at 5,000 RPM the maximum break mean effective pressure we can achieve is 19.5 bar versus on E10 at 5,000 RPM it's just 9.9 bar meaning nearly half so if you do the math this is making about 380 horsepower running E85 whereas here we're only making about 190 horsepower double the power simply by using a different fuel now one of the key things that's worth pointing out is this is looking at the maximum Brak mean effective pressure at an ideal air fuel ratio meaning you're you're running these at stochiometric in both of these cases so you could make more power with E10 this could have a higher pressure but it would have to use fuel enrichment meaning add in more fuel to help have some of that cooling property and because of that you can make more power but it means your efficiency is going to tank so with this test Ford was looking at how much power can they make without having to rely on fuel enrichment so for this test the E85 had a research octane number of 108 and the engine was running at a higher compression ratio 13 to1 because it can get away with it thanks to that higher octane number versus the E10 which is at a 91 research octane number and the engine was only able to run at a 10:1 compression ratio so we're running at a higher compression ratio and we're running with more boost and the result of this is we make significantly more power and critically we're making that power without harming the engine now it doesn't have to all be about power so because ethanol allows you to use a higher compression ratio it means you can also achieve greater thermal efficiencies so in this testing they found using E85 versus E10 they could see anywhere from 10 to 34% efficiency improvements by using that different fuel now this is actually really interesting because if you look at this curve here you can see the initial benefit from adding ethanol to gasoline is very high right it really dramatically increases that octane number and then the benefit kind of goes away same deal over here right you still get a benefit here but the initial impact is very strong so what was fascinating in this test when they went from E10 to E20 meaning taking today's gasoline that you buy at the pump and adding in 10% ethanol to it that raised the octane number that allowed for using an 11.9 to1 compression ratio versus 10:1 compression ratio and still have similar not characteristics and the efficiency Improvement here outweighed the density the energy density lost because ethanol has less energy within that amount of fuel so they actually saw a 1% mile per gallon Improvement by adding ethanol even though it has less Energy Efficiency beats energy density that is absolutely awesome to see now if you've ever messed around with pure gasoline in your car you might now be wondering well wait a minute why why do I get worse fuel economy with E10 meaning 10% ethanol if it has this efficiency advantage over pure gasoline ezo well because that's not how it works here in the US so in the US if you were to buy pure EZ pure gasoline with a 91 research octane number or you were to buy E10 with a 91 research octane number well what that 91 research octane number E10 has is a lower blend stock so an 87 research octane number for for example plus ethanol then bringing it up to a 91 so there's less energy within that gallon of fuel but it will perform exactly the same as gasoline with that same octane number in other words you're going to get worse fuel economy because there's less energy same performance so there you have it ethanol as a fuel can lead to Crazy horsepower numbers if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below thanks for watchinga gallon of ethanol only has about 2/3 of the amount of energy as is stored in a gallon of gasoline and yet you can make more power using ethanol hello everyone and welcome in this video we're talking about why ethanol is capable of making such big Power numbers so the first thing we need to understand is that these two fuels have very different air fuel ratios so if we look at pure gasoline and other words e0 meaning 0% ethanol content it has an air fuel ratio by mass of 14 .7 Parts air to one part fuel if we look at pure ethanol E100 it has an air fuel ratio of 9 to1 so it's significantly lower meaning you're going to be using more ethanol for the same amount of air as you would with gasoline so the energy density by volume of gasoline 33.7 kwatt hours per gallon versus only 22.6 kwatt hours per gallon of ethanol so it's at about 67% of the energy content now if we look at energy density by Mass in other words the lower heating value well it's 12.21 kwatt hours of energy per kilogram of gasoline versus just 7.45 KW hours per kilogram of ethanol now here's the interesting thing so if we have an engine and within that cylinder we have 14.7 kg of air which yes is a lot uh it's just going to make our math simple that's why we're using that number well that means then we only need 1 kg of fuel because that's our air fuel ratio 14.7 to1 now Now ethanol on the other hand has a lower fuel ratio so we'll have to take that 14.7 divide it by 9 and that means we're going to need 1.63 kg of ethanol to put into that cylinder to have the ideal mixture with that fuel so now if we multiply our energy density by how much fuel is going in it that'll tell us the total amount of energy that will then be in that cylinder with the air and the fuel so we multiply 12.21 * 1 pretty easy 12.21 kilowatt hours within that cylinder and then for ethanol we multiply 7.45 by 1.63 and that gives us 12.17 so as you can see these are nearly identical so while it has less energy in it you inject more fuel within that cylinder for the same amount of air and thus they make very equal power assuming their thermal efficiencies are the same so if you need to use more fuel to make the same amount of power does this mean your fuel economy is trash yes now if you were to assume an engine could run on either fuel with equal thermal efficiency and it was getting 30 m per gallon using pure gasoline well it would get about 20 m per gallon using ethanol in other words gasoline giving a 50% Improvement in fuel economy Now consumer reports actually ran a test with a Chevy Tahoe and on E10 so regular pump gas they were getting 14 m per gallon versus using E85 they got just 10 m per gallon so in other words a a 40% real world Improvement in MPG using gasoline however ethanol has a greater thermal efficiency and ethanol can make much more power so versus gasoline ethanol has two big advantages and both of these relate to the fuel's octane number now the first part of this is a chemical property of ethanol so it's inherent to the fuel itself so if you take an engine that has a variable compression ratio and then you put a fuel within that engine and you compress it a certain amount and you start to see hey do we have any knock and you don't so you further increase that compression ratio and you say hey do we run into engine knock no and you don't so you keep going and you keep going and you keep going until you finally start to have knock and that gives you a way to compare the octane number of different fuels how much compression ratio can it handle before you start to run into knock so that is how research octane number is calculated and it's on a scale that gives you premium gasoline having an octane rating of about 97 you could be much lower than this uh for lower quality gasolines and then of course ethanol here at 109 for its octane rating so as you can see significantly higher meaning you can use higher compression ratios it is more resistant to knock now as you start to add ethanol into gasoline you increase the properties of gasoline uh to resist knock so that's what this plot here is looking at from a study which I found super interesting study and what it shows is that as you start to add that ethanol the initial increase in the octane number of the fuel is very dramatic but then by about 30 to 40% you no longer get any benefit from it so after about 40% there's no real benefit from a chemical standpoint of adding ethanol into gasoline to increase that octane number now whether you're using port injection or direct injection this Advantage exists because it's purely a property of the fuel itself however there is a cooling benefit that is much more prominent using direct injection all right this is awesome so we need to understand something called heat of vaporization so as we inject fuel into the cylinder that fuel is going to change from a liquid to a gas and it requires energy to do this in order to transform from a liquid to a gas so that fuel is pulling energy from the surrounding environment to create that phase change and in doing so it's cooling down that surrounding environment this is great because it means lower cylinder temperatures which means less likelihood for knock now if you're using direct injection that is all occurring directly within the cylinder so it's a much greater benefit than if you're doing that say in the intake and you're pulling from you know the intake environment to cool down rather than having it all occur within the cylinder so it's important where it occurs Now ethanol has an advantage in its heat of vaporization versus gasoline so if we look at that number for gasoline it's 305 KJ per kilogram of fuel versus ethanol it's 885 KJ per kilogram of fuel which you can see is much greater now keep in mind we're injecting even more fuel versus gasoline for the same amount of air so if we look at the heat of vaporization per kilogram of air fuel mixture that numbers even greater for ethanol so if you take 305 and you divide it by 14.7 + 1 that gives you 19.4 and if you take 885 and divide it by 9 + 1 well that gives you 88.5 and if you take this number and divide it by this number that means you have a 4.56 times Advantage as far as heat of vaporization now what does this translate to as far as a temperature drop well the maximum theoretical temperature drop for gasoline this 97 gasoline we're using here being 20° versus ethanol E100 80° temperature drop because of that heat of vaporization now this means you have a much cooler cylinder which means you've significantly reduced your chances for knock now this correlates with our octane number so we saw that there was a chemical benefit of adding a certain percentage of ethanol into our gasoline and that raises our octane number so that's the same plot we have drawn right here now we also have that cooling benefit which is in addition so that further raises to our total octane number which you can see drawn here so here is just from the chemical benefit and then as you can see the more ethanol you have because all of it will always always provide a heat of vaporization benefit The Wider that Gap occurs and you always get a benefit from having more ethanol within the fuel from a cooling standpoint now it's worth mentioning that this Advantage is much greater for direct injection because that's occurring within the cylinder than port injection so the chemical Advantage is true for both the total Advantage the cooling Advantage here is much more so for direct injection so because ethanol can provide a much higher octane number well it means you have more flexibility with your ignition timing it means you can run more boost and it means you can run higher compression ratios all of this meaning you can make more power so I found a really cool study performed by Ford where they took a 3.5 L direct injection turbocharged engine out of an F-150 and they put various fuels in it so two of those fuels being E10 as well as E85 and then they essentially cranked up the Boost with each of these different fuels until they ran into knock until they ran into engine problems so what we're looking at here on the bottom we have engine RPM on the left we have brake mean effective pressure if you're unfamiliar with brake mean effective pressure you can think of it as torque per liter and I'll do some helpful translating a little later on to help explain this but here we can see the curves of these two fuels right and as you can see E85 has a much greater torque per liter brake mean effective pressure than E10 so if we look at this point right here we have 5,000 RPM and at 5,000 RPM the maximum break mean effective pressure we can achieve is 19.5 bar versus on E10 at 5,000 RPM it's just 9.9 bar meaning nearly half so if you do the math this is making about 380 horsepower running E85 whereas here we're only making about 190 horsepower double the power simply by using a different fuel now one of the key things that's worth pointing out is this is looking at the maximum Brak mean effective pressure at an ideal air fuel ratio meaning you're you're running these at stochiometric in both of these cases so you could make more power with E10 this could have a higher pressure but it would have to use fuel enrichment meaning add in more fuel to help have some of that cooling property and because of that you can make more power but it means your efficiency is going to tank so with this test Ford was looking at how much power can they make without having to rely on fuel enrichment so for this test the E85 had a research octane number of 108 and the engine was running at a higher compression ratio 13 to1 because it can get away with it thanks to that higher octane number versus the E10 which is at a 91 research octane number and the engine was only able to run at a 10:1 compression ratio so we're running at a higher compression ratio and we're running with more boost and the result of this is we make significantly more power and critically we're making that power without harming the engine now it doesn't have to all be about power so because ethanol allows you to use a higher compression ratio it means you can also achieve greater thermal efficiencies so in this testing they found using E85 versus E10 they could see anywhere from 10 to 34% efficiency improvements by using that different fuel now this is actually really interesting because if you look at this curve here you can see the initial benefit from adding ethanol to gasoline is very high right it really dramatically increases that octane number and then the benefit kind of goes away same deal over here right you still get a benefit here but the initial impact is very strong so what was fascinating in this test when they went from E10 to E20 meaning taking today's gasoline that you buy at the pump and adding in 10% ethanol to it that raised the octane number that allowed for using an 11.9 to1 compression ratio versus 10:1 compression ratio and still have similar not characteristics and the efficiency Improvement here outweighed the density the energy density lost because ethanol has less energy within that amount of fuel so they actually saw a 1% mile per gallon Improvement by adding ethanol even though it has less Energy Efficiency beats energy density that is absolutely awesome to see now if you've ever messed around with pure gasoline in your car you might now be wondering well wait a minute why why do I get worse fuel economy with E10 meaning 10% ethanol if it has this efficiency advantage over pure gasoline ezo well because that's not how it works here in the US so in the US if you were to buy pure EZ pure gasoline with a 91 research octane number or you were to buy E10 with a 91 research octane number well what that 91 research octane number E10 has is a lower blend stock so an 87 research octane number for for example plus ethanol then bringing it up to a 91 so there's less energy within that gallon of fuel but it will perform exactly the same as gasoline with that same octane number in other words you're going to get worse fuel economy because there's less energy same performance so there you have it ethanol as a fuel can lead to Crazy horsepower numbers if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below thanks for watching\n"