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Green fuel out performs petrol according to top car firm |
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Transport
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Written by Peter Warren
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Tuesday, 02 May 2006 |
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Published July 12, 2006 - Guardian
Environment Section under headline 'Fast Forward'
A car that is powered by green fuel could soon win a formula one race, according to engine designers at the car company Lotus.
Richard Pearson, a technical specialist at Lotus Engineering and a
champion of greener engines, says tests being conducted at the company
have found that high-performance engines run on ethanol - which is
mostly made from sugar cane and maize - can produce more power than
their petrol counterparts.
"We are developing a demonstrator vehicle based on a super-charged
Lotus Exige that is more powerful and more efficient than a petrol
version," Pearson says. "We have found that you can get more
performance from a high-performance engine if you use ethanol because
of its octane number, which is better than petrol's. It's particularly
marked in cars that have super- charged and turbo-charged engines."
The company's research, says Pearson, could revolutionise the car
industry. "We have found efficiency increases which, while not
enormous, are still the sort of increases that people are spending
billions of dollars trying to achieve in the automotive sector," he
says.
The work at Lotus, which has become increasingly interested in
developing biofuel technologies, is now being reflected across the
globe, with ethanol seen as one of the most promising options to help
meet Kyoto targets.
At FEV, another company involved in research into biofuel engines
for the car industry, researchers confirmed that they too were working
on a project involving an ethanol engine. "There are a lot of
possibilities for it as an additive, and there's obviously going to be
a lot of interest in these fuels for a long time," a spokesman said.
Around the globe, more farmers are turning maize and sugar cane
into fuel alcohol. Last year, ethanol fuel production jumped 19% to
36bn litres, says Washington-based thinktank Earthwatch in its latest
Vital Signs book. The knock-on effects of Brazil turning more and more
of its sugar cane production to ethanol are partly responsible for a
doubling of the world's sugar price. Meanwhile, 660m litres from the
EU's wine lake is to be turned into ethanol this year.
The increased demand for alcohol and biofuel powered engines is now
prompting a surge in the number of countries proposing biofuel
programmes, with Canada, China, India, Malawi, the Philippines and
Thailand joining British entrepreneurs and Silicon Valley venture
capitalists in biofuel projects.
"While it can't replace petrol globally, because of the land area
necessary to produce ethanol, it can still provide the solution for a
lot of countries," Pearson says. "If you take Australia as an example,
30m hectares of fast-growing trees would be able to produce enough
alcohol to provide 90% of the country's fuel requirements by 2050."
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