Advanced BioFuels USA

by Ann Bailey (Ethanol Producer Magazine)  Glacial Lakes challenge in Watertown, SD, demonstrates E30 is a winner. The midlevel ethanol blend caused no check engine lights, mileage was virtually unchanged and resulted in real savings.   —  The E30 Challenge passed the test—from the organizers to the participants, praise was heaped on the program sponsored by Glacial Lakes Energy LLC  in Watertown, South Dakota.

The E30 Challenge, which ran from fall  2015 to fall 2016, was designed to show motorists they could safely use E30 fuel. The study focused on two aspects: dynamometer testing to show that modern vehicles can adapt and use higher-octane fuels, and collection of real-world, on-road data showing vehicles fueled with E30 still operate within the vehicles’ calibration range set up by the manufacturers’ engineers.

Watertown was an ideal location for the challenge because it has one of the largest, if not the largest, infrastructure of blender pumps in the United States, says Marcy Kohl, Glacial Lakes Energy corporate communications manager. “We have over 40 blender pumps in Watertown and we’re the size of about 22,000 people. We thought we would be the perfect fit because we had the infrastructure.” The E30 Challenge was launched to increase awareness of the fuel and where to get it, and to encourage people to try using E30 in their vehicles, whether they were flex fuel or not. “We knew it would work, but we wanted other people to try it,” she says.

Before Glacial Lakes Energy launched the challenge, it wanted to be sure key people were well-informed, Kohl says. “We could promote E30 all day long and get consumers to use it, but the first time they went to their auto technicians and they say, ‘That stuff is junk, don’t use it,’ our efforts are in vain.”  Challenge organizers talked to area technicians, the automotive department at the Lake Area Technical Institute, retailers and car dealerships.

Talking to area auto technicians and giving them information about E30 was key, because many times they blame check engine lights on the ethanol content of the fuel, says Andy Wicks, owner of DynoTune Speed and Performance in Watertown. Wicks provided professional expertise and helped conduct the E30 Challenge. “We were able to dispel a lot of myths. We were trying to provide them with good information that is real so the technicians can use it to repair vehicles properly, rather than having them say, ‘Don’t use ethanol because you’re going to have a problem.’ We’re actually showing them what’s going on and that’s why the program is so successful, I believe. A lot of those technicians actually stated using E30 in their cars based on our findings,” Wicks says.

Besides educating auto technicians and others working with vehicles, Glacial Lakes Energy also worked to inform organizations operating fleets of vehicles.

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Data Collection
After Glacial Lakes Energy launched the educational part of the E30 challenge, it purchased data loggers. “We wanted to have some sound evidence to submit to the U.S. EPA to prove that E30 works in nonflex-fuel vehicles,” Kohl says. The data loggers—memory boxes that plug into the vehicles’ Onboard Diagnostic—were the same kind EPA uses to record data.

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The 40 vehicles in the challenge were labeled so that everyone would know they were test vehicles. During the Challenge, participants filled their tanks three times with E10 and three times with E30 and then were asked to talk about how their vehicles drove with the fuels. Meanwhile, the data loggers recorded statistical information about the vehicles’ performance.

The official test results showed:

• Modern vehicles filled with E30, could adapt to higher octane to improve performance and increase power.

• All vehicles tested adapted to E30 staying within the OEM computer calibration range.

• No difference in average miles per gallon was found, with smaller engines showing the best response.

• Savings amounted to .0137 cents per mile, with a projected annual savings of more than $200 per vehicle.

• There were no check engine lights as a result of using E30.

“What we found is all cars ’96 and newer have enough capacity in the factory fuel injection (system) to accommodate up to 30 percent ethanol—no check engine lights, no drivability problems,” Wicks says. Wicks, long a believer in using ethanol to fuel vehicles, was not surprised at the E30 Challenge study results. “At DynoTune Speed and Performance, we concentrate on high-performance, mostly fuel-injected street cars—Corvettes, Mustangs, Camaros, things like that. In 2005, 2006, we started using E85 and a number of ethanol blends as a substitute for racing fuel. We were comparing $12- to $15- a gallon race gas with the fuel that was available at the pump in the high performance cars. We were able to transition a lot of engines efficiently and safely and we made some pretty significant horsepower (improvement) with it,” Wicks says.  READ MORE / MORE