TransForum Vol. 5, No. 1

Advances Have Made Alternative-Fuel Use Nearly "Invisible"

Stories circulating about how different it is to drive Toyota's Prius hybrid-electric car may have you thinking that the relatively minor differences would be only magnified once you got inside an alternative-fuel vehicle that ran on compressed natural gas (CNG) or an ethanol (E85) or biodiesel (B20) blend. Yet today's AFVs are virtually indistinguishable from their gasoline-fueled counterparts in the ways they handle, look, and drive. This is particularly true of biodiesel- and ethanol-fueled vehicles, which typically don't even carry identifying decals above their back bumpers.

Ken Albert, of the Plant Facilities and Services Division, refills his truck at Argonne's CNG refueling facility.

"Use of ethanol is entirely invisible to the user," notes Paula Mann, who is Fleet Coordinator for Argonne's (ANL's) Plant Facilities and Services (PFS) Division. According to Mann, Argonne operates a fleet of 56 alternative-fuel vehicles, including 8 CNG vehicles (3 vans and 5 pickup trucks), 8 bifuel CNG/gasoline vehicles (5 pickups and 3 vans), and 40 E85 (ethanol, gasoline, or an 85/15% mixture of the two) flex-fuel vehicles (39 vans and 1 pickup). Argonne is considering using biodiesel in its diesel-fueled fleet, but certain technical details need to be worked out first. Biodiesel (B100) is a clean-burning alternative fuel produced from domestic renewable resources. It is often used as a blend consisting of about 20% biodiesel and 80% diesel fuel (B20).

Because there are no commercial alternative-fuel stations nearby, Argonne maintains its own refueling stations for CNG and E85. Refueling a vehicle with E85 is identical to refueling with gasoline, but that's not true of CNG. "Safety glasses are recommended with CNG," explains Ken Albert, a PFS employee, "because it is pumped at a pressure of 2,700 psi. For that reason, you need to be careful to seat the valve correctly before turning on the gas flow." The CNG refueling facility is capable of filling a CNG tank in about the same time it takes to fill your car's gasoline tank.

Albert drives a Ford F150 pickup that's been converted to CNG. "There is a slight hesitation in cold or wet weather until the engine warms up," Albert says, "but then the F150 drives exactly like a standard pickup." The F150 has a small CNG decal above the back bumper, and the CNG tank rides in the far end of the cargo bed, but from a distance, it is indistinguishable from an ordinary pickup truck.

Argonne maintains the AFV fleet in support of its scientific and engineering missions and to keep Argonne in compliance with the Energy Policy Act of 1992, which mandates that fleet owners stock their fleets with specified percentages of AFVs. The AFV fleet was larger in past years, when Argonne participated in a research and demonstration program that was

established to comply with the federal fleet mandates of the Alternative Motor Fuels Act (AMFA), which directed the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to purchase AFVs, use them in federal fleets, and collect data on them. At the height of the effort, Argonne's Center for Transportation Research (CTR) maintained the largest demonstration center in the AMFA program. Data collection focused on vehicle drivability, reliability, and fuel efficiency, along with other operating characteristics, such as emissions and performance under varying weather conditions. The research program ended in 1995. Argonne's fleet of AFVs was greatly reduced in 1997 as a cost-saving measure.

The CTR remains at the forefront of AFV research. The drive toward a hydrogen economy is motivating much of the research in this area. The CTR is working on several promising technologies aimed at providing a smooth transition from today's gasoline-powered internal combustion vehicles to hydrogen-powered vehicles using fuel cells. As a part of that effort, DOE recently awarded a $3.6 million multiyear contract to Argonne and other expert organizations to analyze the hydrogen production and delivery infrastructure as a complex adaptive system by using an agent-based modeling and simulation (ABMS) technique.

Argonne's expertise in alternative fuels was also recently recognized by the China Automotive Technology and Research Center (CATARC), which signed a groundbreaking memorandum of understanding that makes it possible for Argonne and CATARC to exchange information on the commercialization of energy-efficient vehicle technologies and clean transportation fuels in China.

July 20, 2005