Bosch is huge in Brazil, with about 11,000 employees and a dozen or so locations.They make a ton of stuff, from automotive gadgetry, such as sensors, motors, controllers, etc. to power tools.They manufacture parts that are distributed all over the world to almost all the major car companies.
Sorry, but I wasn't allowed take any pictures. I'll include some from the internet to pretty this up a bit.
Here's something: 90% of vehicles in Brazil use flex fuel engines, those that run on either gasoline or ethanol. One of the first differences we noticed about Brazil was that the gas stations have prices listed for both ethanol (~1.69/L) and gasoline (~2.69/L).
Also, I should mention that a liter of ethanol does not provide the same amount of energy that a liter of gasoline does. In fact its about 30-40% less. So if your flex fuel car gets 30 mpg with gasoline, it might only get 20 mpg with ethanol. So, comparing your options at this station, if you were going to drive 120 miles
Gas: $2.60 x 4 liters = $10.40
Ethanol: $1.76 x 6 liters = $10.56
Granted that's that's not accurate because these are liters, not gallons, and reais, not dollars. But the direct comparison is valid, and that's really all I wanted to see. They are pretty close, so it depends mostly on exactly how well your car does on ethanol vs gasoline. If it's 2/3 as energy dense, like I assumed here, then the gas has a slight edge.
Gas: $2.60 x 4 liters = $10.40
Ethanol: $1.76 x 6 liters = $10.56
Granted that's that's not accurate because these are liters, not gallons, and reais, not dollars. But the direct comparison is valid, and that's really all I wanted to see. They are pretty close, so it depends mostly on exactly how well your car does on ethanol vs gasoline. If it's 2/3 as energy dense, like I assumed here, then the gas has a slight edge.
Flex fuel cars really took off in Brazil from 2003 on, replacing and exceeding the existing ethanol-only or gas-only powered vehicles
Quick CO2 note: The reason ethanol is considered a more environmentally friendly fuel is because of CO2 emissions. Burning ethanol does release CO2, just like burning gasoline does. The only difference is that the CO2 released by burning ethanol is no greater than the amount that that plant took in during the course of its recent growth, so the fuel is theoretically carbon neutral. Gasoline on the other hand comes from oil, which took millions of years and high pressure to create. So its only carbon neutral if we're burning it at the rate that its being formed, which is reeeally sloooowly.
Ethanol is convenient for Brazil because they have a tropical climate which supports the growth of sugar cane, which can be easily converted to ethanol. The U.S. produces ethanol as well, but from corn, not sugar. This process requires more effort, and as a result, the production of ethanol in the U.S. actually uses large amounts of fossil fuels to power the machinery used to process the corn. What's more, using corn for fuel also has the economic effect of driving up the cost of corn, which in turn raises the cost for beef, pork and other agricultural products.
Back to Brazil: The flex fuel engine craze started very recently. In 2000, most cars were still exclusively gas-powered in Brazil. In 2003, the flex fuel engine started to catch on, and within the last 10 years, the market has expanded to 90% of vehicles in Brazil.
We were given a presentation at Bosch by a couple of German guys who told us about this flex fuel trend, and then talked about a key engineering challenge of the engines.
If you were to simply put ethanol in a regular gas engine, you would have some issues. Ethanol is more corrosive to most materials, and the higher water content can also cause problems. Ethanol is more electrically conductive as well. Flex fuel engines must correct these issues by using tougher materials, like Teflon-lined SS fuel lines, and by covering certain spark-prone areas. They also have sensing systems that detect within 2-3 minutes which type of fuel you have put in, and will adjust the engine accordingly.
One interesting problem was that ethanol has a higher flash point than gasoline, meaning that the gasoline vaporizes more easily. Because fuel must be vaporized before it can combust, this poses an issue. Cold ethanol won't ignite as well as cold gasoline, so with ethanol, your car might not start! However, once the car was successfully started, it could run just fine on ethanol. So the quick fix was to have a small gasoline tank that was only used for starting the engine, and then the main tank could be used for either ethanol or gasoline. This worked, but you can see why it might be considered a pain in the ass.
A better solution was finalized in 2009 called Flex Start. In order to get enough ethanol in the vapor phase to support combustion, the ethanol can be heated. A small compartment of ethanol can be preheated by the battery to 100 C so that it will combust more easily. This sounds like a simple solution, but in the presentation they talked about extensive heat transfer calculations that had to be done in order to perfect the design. The business kids were falling asleep in the back, and even some of the engineers, but it was really a textbook engineering project.
They also gave us a tour of some of their testing facilities where they do calibrations, emissions testing, and test the vehicle under high and low temperature extremes. They also had a test track!
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