Ethanol Boost Direct Injection Engine Technology equalling efficiency of diesels introduced.

[JohnWxy]

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2009/02/ricardo-introdu.html


Ricardo, Inc. is introducing Ethanol Boosted Direct Injection (EBDI) technology to optimize flex-fuel engines to a level of performance the company says will exceed gasoline engine efficiency and approach levels previously reached only by diesel engines.

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EBDI is an internally-funded Ricardo effort, assisted by partner collaborator contributions. Ricardo says that the project is not an outcome of the DOE-funded project with Bosch and the University of Michigan announced in 2007 to implement an integrated hardware-software system that delivers gasoline-like fuel economy when operating on E-85. (Earlier post.)

Ricardo’s EBDI is not utilizing a secondary ethanol injection from a secondary tank as envisioned by Ethanol Boosting Systems and MIT. (Earlier post.)

EBDI combines advanced boosting to achieve the high cylinder pressure that ethanol enables, a variable valvetrain, and cooled high load EGR with advanced controls and calibration techniques to optimize performance of the engine regardless of the percentage of ethanol in the fuel in the tank—i.e., from E0 to E85 and all intermediate blends created by vehicle fueling.
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This is not the same as the http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/10/startup_working.html">MIT designed Ethanol Direct Injection Engine that Ford is building and will be selling in 2010 (up 30% better fuel economy using only 5% ethanol).

[CRF450]

1. Thats exactly the kind of engine needed for ethanol!

The engines made to run on E85 and regular are in no way optimized to run on ethanol alone, thus being less efficient. They have to run a low compression ratio to handle the low octane level of regular gas.

[JohnWxy]

2. GM and Ford could have done more to improve performance of Flex-Fuellies.

Even without getting into direct injection they could have used super-charging or turbo-charging and down sizing to make Flex-Fuel cars more fuel efficient (with a waste gate you can de-activate the turbo or super charger when running on gas alone).

But the direct injection takes it a big step further and gets better mileage than you can with gasoline alone. The MIT designed engine is particularly sweet in that it uses only about 5% ethanol. We produce enough ethanol right now to supply all the cars on the road using the Direct Injection approach.

[CRF450]

3. Still have to have the right compression in according to the octane level of ethanol

The only direct injected engine I know of so far is the 3.6 v6 made by GM, being used in the Cadillac CTS. That same motor is going in the new Camaro as the base engine.

[JohnWxy]

4. you can effectively get that by using turbo or super-charging.

ford's is going into the Lincoln MKR

http://www.autoblog.com/2008/01/06/detroit-2008-ford-launches-ecoboost-gas-turbo-direct-injection/

The first EcoBoost engine out of the gate is the 340hp 3.5L V-6, This will be the optional engine in the Lincoln MKS starting in 2009 in place of a V-8.