DaveSchenker and his mother, Rebecca Carlson, explain Greenspeed's record-breaking veggie oil powered diesel truck at the Washington, DC Auto Show. Photo R.Kozak

Currently working with Dave Schenker on this project are Patrick Johnston, mechanics and fabrication; Mike Van Kirk, lighting and electrical; Adrian Rothenbuhler, electrical and mechanical; Seth Feuerborn, modeling and mechanics; Ken Fukumoto, treasurer; Jenny Kniss, crew chief and safety.

They are looking forward to joining other speed freaks in August 2012 at Speedweek on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, working to break the 215 mph world land speed record for all vehicles in the Diesel Truck classification.  To put this in perspective, Mike Journee on NewWest.Net reminds us that “Fewer people have gone 200 mph on land than have stood atop Mount Everest.”

And all this with raw biofuel.

Credit Schenker and club alumna and mechanical engineering student Jozey Mitcham with the initial fundraising and piecing together of the race truck.

As Jalopnik explains, “Team leader, Boise student Dave Schenker says his inspiration to play with diesel engines sprang from Rudolph Diesel’s original idea — to run farm equipment on fuel farmers could grow themselves.”

Schenker’s history of home-schooled education serves as a foundation to his dedication to a club formed to “give students the opportunity to gain real life experience working in an interdisciplinary environment while designing, building and racing a vegetable oil powered vehicle.”

To run on vegetable oil, that oil must first be heated in a specialized tank.  Other modifications made over two and a half months during the summer of 2011 focused on giving the engine enough horsepower and the truck enough chassis strength and weight to achieve high speeds.

The members of Greenspeed use their Class C driving and engine licenses with the Southern California Timing Association to run in the Diesel Truck classification.

Although they started with vegetable oil, the club anticipates using other alternative fuels, perhaps connecting with other energy research conducted at Boise State.  READ MORE and MORE (New West Energy) and MORE (Jalopnik) and MORE (Landspeed Louise)

…Austin Dillon, 2011 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Champion, will drive the No. 3 Chevrolet during the 2012 NASCAR Nationwide Series season with American Ethanol serving as the primary sponsor for six races as well as one race in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series in 2012.

…Kenny Wallace, a driver who has been a strong promoter of corn growers and ethanol over the past year, will drive the No. 09 Toyota Camry in the NASCAR Nationwide Series for RAB Racing. American Ethanol will partner with Wallace for the Sprint Cup Series Daytona 500, as well as five races in the Nationwide Series.    READ MORE (includes audio interviews) and MORE (American Ethanol Racing)

…Iowa Corn CEO Craig Floss says the INDYCAR race is an excellent opportunity to promote ethanol—and he says this year will be especially exciting as INDYCAR will begin using E85, a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline, in its vehicles.

The IndyCar Series has been running on 100 percent ethanol since 2007.  The switch to E85 is seen as a marketing move designed to align the series with a fuel that consumers can use in their own flex-fuel vehicles.  READ MORE

When Ferrari decided to fuel their latest creations with E-85 (85% ethanol) they weren’t doing it as a styling statement. They were doing it for performance.  Here a little story about Ferraris and E-85.

In 2009, their F340 racers in the American Le Mans Green Racing Challenge series were losing to Corvettes and Porsches. Before the 2010 season the Maranello based company finally decided to follow the recommendation of their American team and tested their racing engines with E-85.  Once engineers saw the possibilities on the dynamometers, they optimized valve and ignition timing parameters and the compression ratio to use ethanol’s higher octane and better cooling properties. The results? More power, good fuel economy, and race wins. Voila!

Ferrari has used racing since they were founded in the late 1940s as a testing ground for their performance technologies. They have won more sports car and Formula 1 races than any other manufacturer. The performance technologies they pioneered are now in the cars we’re all driving. The latest example is the double-clutch, paddle-shifter transmission that Ferrari brought to Formula 1. It’s now becoming the standard transmission in high mileage, lower cost vehicles such as the 40+ mpg Ford Focus.

So, when Ferrari wanted to show the world how to combine performance, reduced climate change effects, and beauty in a production car, they made the logical choice: E-85. With Ferrari’s track record, you might want to pay attention. The next high-mileage, high performance, $25,000 car you buy will not only have that double-clutch transmission, but will also be feeding the light weight, highly powerful and efficient turbocharged engine with high ethanol content fuel. Voila!  READ MORE and MORE

Click on photo to enlarge.

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During our first meeting Wayne told me that he used a rather large, very old Ford pickup to do a lot of his farm work, including transporting farm equipment, hay and cattle, and spreading fertilizer on his pastures. The problem was gas mileage: it was about 8 mpg.

So, way back when gas rose above $2.00/gal Wayne decided to do something about it. He knew that the Germans had figured out how to run their military vehicles with small wood gasifiers when they ran out of gas supplies in World War II. Since he had some experience with building wood burning stoves and working on cars, and had a small custom sawing operation which generated endless “slabs”, or off-cuts, that could be used as fuel, Wayne decided that this was going to be his first line of attack.

Fast forward: in 2011 Wayne officially broke the world wood gas speed record on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, independently recorded at 71 mph, with the previous record having been set at 46 mph. And during the six years prior to this achievement, he gave me a sound lesson in Alabama country ingenuity.

…First, I was curious about what other fuel besides wood, this gasifier could use. Wayne assured me that he had mixed many different feedstocks with wood, including garbage and junk mail. We proceeded to test pelletized broiler litter, corn cobs and switchgrass cubes. All worked fine. READ MORE

The Indiana company this week received the 2011 Paul Dana Excellence in Bioenergy Leadership Award from the state department of agriculture. The award was established to honor the memory of Indy Racing League driver Paul Dana who was killed in a racing accident in 2006 after seeing the fulfillment of his dream that the IRL adopt ethanol as a racing fuel.  READ MORE

At the NASCAR Green Summit today (November 17, 2011), POET announced plans to decrease the greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity of ethanol production 10 percent this decade and produce 500 million pounds of biobased products by 2015. The goals are part of its sustainability initiative to enhance the environmental performance of ethanol, Ingreenuity

The GHG reduction goal, when combined with the 10 percent reduction the company has achieved since 2005, would represent a 20 percent cut from 2005 levels by 2020.

Speaking at the Summit, POET founder and CEO Jeff Broin said the company has dramatically increased the energy efficiency of ethanol production. “Since we started producing ethanol 23 years ago, we’ve cut our energy use by more than half,” Broin said. “In just the past five years, we’ve cut our greenhouse gas intensity by 10 percent. Now we’ve set a goal to reduce that by a further 10 percent and I have confidence that our team will meet and even exceed it.”

POET has produced ethanol with increasing efficiency primarily through steady advances in production technology. The most prominent of those advances is POET’s patented BPX process that converts starch to ethanol without heat, reducing energy needs by 10-15 percent.

Fossil energy use has also decreased at POET’s production facilities through the use of alternative energy. One facility is powered almost entirely by a waste wood boiler and landfill gas. Another produces biogas in an anaerobic digestor, and three facilities employ cogeneration.

A significant future reduction in fossil energy use is expected as cellulosic ethanol technology is added to POET facilities. Project LIBERTY, POET’s first commercial cellulosic ethanol facility, reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 111% compared to gasoline partly because it eliminates the use of natural gas at the adjacent corn ethanol plant. Bolting the LIBERTY technology onto other POET facilities has the potential to reduce the greenhouse gas intensity of ethanol production significantly more than POET’s current goal.

POET also set an annual production goal of 500 million pounds of biobased products by 2015. Those products, like corn oil and zein the company is already producing, would replace a variety of petroleum-based products.

“To reverse the damage that oil has done to our planet, we need more than renewable fuel,” Broin said. “Petroleum is pervasive in our lives, but it doesn’t have to be that way. There are biobased alternatives to everything that comes from a barrel of oil, and POET is rapidly moving to commercialize those alternatives.”

These are the second and third goals of Ingreenuity, POET’s initiative to improve the environmental performance of ethanol. The first goal is to reduce the water intensity of ethanol production from an average of 3 gallons to 2.33.  READ MORE

…When the company first started testing its biogasoline, according to (vice president of business development and engineering Greg) Keenan, the fuel could only be used in lawnmowers and that’s it. But, through technical validation and analysis, Virent was able to move quickly and optimize its fuel product because of Shell’s robust technical and market resources, not only domestically, but also globally.

…Another important area (Virent CEO Lee) Edwards highlighted as a valuable benefit that comes with working alongside a major oil company is that Shell has extensive wherewithal when it comes to policy, and not just in the U.S. Shell is actively involved in energy policy globally and while Virent is focused on initially deploying its technology commercially in the U.S., Edwards says that with Shell’s help, it will be more educated on compliance issues prior to deploying its technology and delivering its future product to unfamiliar markets abroad.

…Virent followed up the test with another in August that included Virent’s biogasoline blended into fuel supplied by Shell to Scuderia Ferrari for the last three races of the 2010 Formula One championship.

“I think the use of the fuel in a very technical application such as in the Ferrari Formula One racecar was a highlight for the company because it really demonstrated the fuel we’re producing is truly a replacement drop-in molecule that has high quality,” Kennan says. “That was very exciting.”  READ MORE

…Under the hood is where the vehicle’s exterior treat matches wits with an interior trick.  Powered by Mazda’s ever-dependable MZR 2.0-liter engine, the MX-5 Spyder is fueled by BP’s isobutanol.  The significance?  The biofuel supports Mazda’s mantra of “Sustainable Zoom-Zoom,” which means crafting exciting, fun-to-drive vehicles that create minimal environmental impact.  A testament to this philosophy is the Mazda/Dyson Racing entry in the American Le Mans Series.  The #16 LMP1Lola vehicle features a turbocharged MZR-R 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine, runs on isobutanol and beat competing larger-block V-12s to win the manufacturer, team and drivers championships for the 2011 racing season.  Mazda also was given the Michelin® Green X® Challenge at the Baltimore Grand Prix, a distinction awarded to category cars that prove to be the “cleanest, fastest, most efficient” in the race.

Although similar to how ethanol is produced from agricultural feedstock, isobutanol does not compromise vehicle performance for the sake of fuel economy and can be added to the current fuel distribution infrastructure without requiring modifications in blending facilities, storage tanks and retail station pumps.  Isobutanol’s compatibility with existing technology and infrastructures is a significant step toward meeting the demand in renewable fuels for transportation.  READ MORE and MORE (TG Daily)

“We are extremely excited that Bowyer’s No. 33 car will prominently feature American Ethanol in this week’s race,” said National Corn Growers Association NASCAR Advisory Committee Chair Martin Barbre.

…During every race, all NASCAR race cars run on E15 and the American Ethanol logo is displayed around all race car fuel ports. In addition, Bowyer has an American Ethanol logo on his race suit at every race.  READ MORE