Brazil engineers try boosting ethanol's efficiency

Mon Jun 4, 2007 5:20 PM ET

By Terry Wade

SAO PAULO, June 4 (Reuters) - Brazilian automotive engineers are working to design engines that burn ethanol as efficiently as gasoline, as more of their technologies are adopted by countries turning to biofuels.

"The local technology is serving as a foundation," Fabio Ferreira, head of applied engineering in Brazil for Germany's Robert Bosch GmBH , which makes fuel injectors, said on Monday. "The alcohol protected fuel injector was designed here and later was adopted worldwide."

Ethanol, or alcohol, can cause corrosion, which requires engine makers to use resistant materials for fuel tanks, intake and exhaust systems.

New engines sold in Brazil, called flex-fuel motors, run on any combination of ethanol, which is distilled from sugar cane, or gasoline.

Right now, a tank of pure ethanol runs out of fuel about 30 percent faster than one burning gasoline. Engineers want to close that gap.

More than 80 percent of new cars sold in Brazil have flex-fuel engines, which were introduced in 2003. Ethanol in Brazil, the world's biggest sugar cane grower, tends to be about half as expensive as gasoline.

All Brazilian gasoline stations sell pure ethanol, or gasoline that contains a mixture of about 20 percent ethanol.

Besides fuel injectors, automotive makers like Volkswagen and General Motors > are playing with turbos, variable valve timing, camshafts, fuel pumps, pre-heating for cold starting, spark plugs, faster computer chips and newer softwares to improve the efficiency of burning fuels containing alcohol.

They also say efficiency improves with the use of direct injection technology, in which fuel and air are mixed inside the engine instead of before they enter it.

Some gasoline stations in Sweden and the United States sell fuel that is 85 percent ethanol and more countries are expected to push the biofuel on concerns about global warming and renewable energy.

"Once ethanol is more widely distributed, our engine technology will become very important," Henry Joseph Jr., president of the commission on energy and the environment for Anfavea, the Brazilian association of automakers, said at a two-day ethanol summit in Sao Paulo, Brazil's business capital.