Butanol

The omnivorous engine test stand at Argonne’s Center for Transportation Research. The Argonne-developed engine is optimized to run efficiently on blends of gasoline, ethanol and butanol.

Argonne is conducting detailed research on the effects of butanol as a blending agent, as well as a neat fuel—not diluted or mixed with other substances. Some of the most important research questions revolve around butanol’s impact on emissions behavior (with special emphasis on currently non-regulated emissions) and fuel economy.

Butanol might also allow blend-specific engine designs or extend the usable range of special combustion regimes. Argonne's omnivorous engine is an automobile engine that has been tailored to efficiently run on blends of gasoline, ethanol and butanol. A combustion engine designed and calibrated specifically for use with alternative fuels such as butanol will result in higher fuel efficiency and could potentially reduce engine emissions.

Omnivorous Engine Project

Argonne’s Center for Transportation Research set up a dedicated test engine for alternative fuels research. It is a state-of-the-art engine test cell with low- and high-speed data acquisition. The omnivorous engine has a modern, fully-instrumented four-cylinder direct-injection engine. It has an engine control unit with full calibration access and full emissions sampling capability for regulated and non-regulated emissions. The omnivorous engine also supports integration of advanced sensing tools (ion-sensing) for engine controls development.

In 2003, BP and DuPont created a partnership to develop advanced biofuels that provide improved options for expanding energy supplies and accelerate the move to renewable transportation fuels that can lower overall greenhouse gas emissions. Their first projected product, which was supposed to be introduced to the market at the end of 2007, was biobutanol.

The new U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard has made it a requirement to increase the production of ethanol and advanced biofuels to 36 billion gallons by 2022. Ethanol will be capped at 15 billion gallons, which leaves 21 billion gallons to come from other sources, such as butanol.

This work is supported by the Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy under the direction of Kevin Stork.

More

• 'Omnivorous engine' hopes to run on many fuels (Argonne press release - 9/5/2008)
• Omnivorous Engine Project (1 MB pdf)

February 2010