I am posting this project as a means for every farmer to promote their own margins and stabilize the end use of grain and biomass.  I am releasing this project to focus on others.   In no way stand to benefit from the outcome except through my role as grain farmer.

Attached is information about that best possible use of ethanol as a fuel in internal combustion engines.  By direct injecting ethanol - alone or in combination with gasoline- extremely high thermal efficiencies can be achieved along with extremely high specific power for any given engine size (approaching 30 atm BMEP ) . The concepts and patents were developed through MIT and confirmed at AVL Engineering.   You could run your class 8 truck safely on an 8-9 liter engine (or any other farm equipment).

Using new direct injection engines, such as the upcoming 2.7l Ecoboost, one can achieve diesel-like  fuel efficiency at a fraction of the weight penalty (and cost!!!) of a conventional diesel engine.  The torque curve profile can be EXACTLY the same as a conventional common rail diesel making it handle in a very similar manner.  High BMEP is made possible through advanced metallurgy of modern engine blocks, heads, and pistons (example: compacted graphite iron).

Project ' Sucellus' outlines an example build using Ford components.  Other manufacturer have similarly capable off-the-shelf parts.  The final product (from any truck OWM) would be a sort of "Corn Belt Special" truck capable of using up to 100% ethanol (but also down to 0% ethanol necessarily  sacrificing engine performance).    The truck could be built in volume using the Ford QVM pathway for powertrain up-fitters (example: Rousch) or similar up-fitter programs offered through other OEM's.

If you have access to R&D dollars through your farm,  Motorsports enterprise,  local cooperative, local ethanol plant board, or state Corn Growers Association, please consider taking this project on.   I can serve as technical adviser but I do not have the time to continue to spearhead the technology.   One could envision a crowd funding effort to build the truck.

This is the future of high octane biofuel use.  Please consider taking on this project in the interest of your own profit margins.  I've worked quite hard building the set of required contacts and done considerable research and due diligence into the technology.  A can assure you this is THE path forward in promotion of biofuels.   If one or more prototypes are built, I assure you that the OEM will look closely into offering it as an options package.

Ethanol optimization solves:

1) Volume fuel efficiency perception of the consumer

2) "Wasted" octane in current flex fuel technology

3) Emissions (requires inexpensive 3-way catalyst already found on all gasoline vehicles)

4) Issues of local market availability of ethanol blends by automatically adapting to local blends and incentivizing higher ethanol usage

5)  OVERALL CONSUMER PERCEPTION OF BIOFUELS

Please contact me if you require further details on taking over lead on this demonstration vehicle.

Edit:  Grammatical error in original draft document. 

EBS__brochure_2014.pdf (1123KB - 888 downloads)

Project_Sucellus_8_11_2014.doc (55KB - 1037 downloads)