If you've ever struggled to keep one car running through a Minnesota winter, you can understand Bill Roberts' doubts about the new fuel he was being asked to try.
The director of fleet services at the University of Minnesota, Roberts oversees more than 900 vehicles throughout the state. Several months ago he was asked to start fueling 40 of those cars with E20, a mix of 20 percent ethanol and 80 percent gasoline. For the sake of comparison, 40 matching vehicle were fueled with 100 gasoline.
"We really expected that we were going to have some drivability issues," says Roberts, "some stuttering, maybe some cold start problems." After 13 months of testing the verdict is in. "We really had no problem," he says, "I was very impressed."
Not only did the vehicles run as well on E20 as they did on gasoline, researchers found no significant decrease in gas mileage.
The tests were part of an E20 study conducted by the university's department of mechanical engineering. While the U of M studied drivability issues such as starting and stuttering, engineers at Minnesota State University Mankato tested the effects of E20 on engines and fuel system components.
"They found no significant issues," says David Kittelson, mechanical engineering professor at the U of M. "The results are very good news for people who would like to expand the use of ethanol."
Minnesota will use the test results to try to persuade the Environmental Protection Agency to allow the sale of E20 in Minnesota. An EPA waiver is needed for Minnesota to meet a legislative mandate that all gasoline contain 20 percent ethanol by 2013. E20 contains twice as much ethanol as the ten percent ethanol blend currently required in Minnesota.
Not everyone favors the increase. Dave Bicking is both a mechanic and a spokesman for the Minnesota Green Party. "The production and processing of corn into ethanol uses almost as much fossil fuel as what it saves," says Bicking.
He also worries about E20's impact on older vehicles. "There's still cars from my shop, still on the road with carburetors. I'll bet they didn't test a single one of those," says Bicking.
For the KARE-11 video, go to http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=501025
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