By ANN HINCH

Associate Editor

SPEEDWAY, Ind. — With Indy’s biggest race day just around the turn, Speedway’s Main Street seemed the ideal place to talk about the business of corn ethanol earlier this month.

Getting a 10 percent ethanol blend into nearly every gasoline pump in the United States was a good start for the corn sector, so those farmers and refiners next aimed high with E85. But while the availability of E85 pumps has expanded rapidly since 2007, drivers are still somewhat standoffish about buying the high-ethanol blend.

While “somewhere in between” isn’t a new rallying cry of those who produce ethanol, it is gaining traction. The Indiana Corn Growers Assoc.’s (ICGA) High-Octane Fuel Summit in Speedway concentrated on educating members, retailers, and those in related industries and public office on the advancement of more pumps with mid-level blends like E20 and E30.

This is in addition to trying to get the U.S. EPA to approve year-round sales of E15, as well as to consider it the new standard safe for use in most vehicles on the road today in addition to (or in place of) E10.

ICGA President Sarah Delbecq said this Summit was a rebranding of its annual Ethanol Forum. Surrounded by the trappings of speed at the Dallara IndyCar Factory, speakers testified to the economic and environmental pluses of mid-level ethanol blends.

Ethanol, said Tom Leone, is a high-octane fuel. And octane performance is what consumers want; at the same time, automakers are under continuing pressure from government regulations to improve fuel efficiency to reduce carbon emissions.

“It’s a very interesting challenge,” said Leone, a technical expert in engine powertrain evaluation and analysis for Ford Motor Co.

Part of that octane formula is engine noise and performance such as a vehicle’s ability to accelerate faster and smoother. Higher-octane gasoline reduces “knock,” which refers to the literal knocking or “pinging” that arises from the air/fuel mixture igniting prematurely in the engine.

Octane fuels a higher compression ratio, which means less knock. Sensors in the engine take care of the actual noise, which longtime drivers may notice is not as prevalent in modern autos as in older ones. For the first 60 years of mass-produced autos, Leone said fuel octane evolved, but it hasn’t changed as much in the last 50.

Mid-level ethanol blends such as E20 or E30, he said, is one way to improve gasoline’s octane rating. One reason – possibly the most critical – E85 hasn’t caught on more is that the loss of miles per gallon (mpg) is not offset by enough of a cost savings at the pump. Leone said E85 delivers 30 percent less energy per gallon than E10.

But using a mid-level blend that is still higher than E10 in the same engine sacrifices only a fraction of energy, he said, and improves engine efficiency – including carbon emissions reductions – enough to more than make up for it. “We really think around E20 is ideal,” he explained.

He noted engineers could today design an engine that would be efficient on E85, but automakers have to take into account availability of types of fuel in the markets into which they sell, the government regulations on engine performance, and cost to the consumer, among other factors.

An octane standard

Leone and Ford – as well as General Motors and Fiat Chrysler, the American “Big Three” – think the United States needs to adopt a national minimum octane standard, which he said would provide more certainty to manufacturers about compliance and fuel compatibility in engines going forward. To pass such a thing would require cooperation among automakers, agriculture, fuel refiners, retailers, distributors, and lawmakers.

Last year, U.S. Reps. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) and Bill Flores (R-Texas) put forth a discussion draft of a bill for an octane standard in the House Committee for Energy and Commerce. Calling it the “21st Century Transportation and Fuels Act,” they proposed changes to the Clean Air Act and Petroleum Marketing Practices Act to “remove longstanding barriers” to availability and use of higher ethanol blends, among other things.

According to an April 2018 report in Automotive News, the Big Three and the U.S. Council for Automotive Research are united in seeking an octane standard of 95 RON, which is basically the same grade as “regular” in Europe and the lowest grade of U.S. premium gas.

RON is used for octane measurement in most countries; U.S. octane is generally measured in AKI, which is about 4-6 numbers below RON for the same fuel sensitivity. Leone said 95 RON is roughly equivalent to 91 AKI (the pump drivers see with the “91” tag at gas stations).

A national octane standard would scrap the multiple AKI grades of “regular” (which is 87) and “premium” fuel, for just 95 RON – to begin with, anyway. Leone said under the proposed bill, 95 RON would only cost 5-10 cents more per gallon than the 87 AKI – versus premium prices of 30-50 cents more for 91 AKI – and give a boost of about 3 percent mpg.

The News article quotes a Ford vice president as saying a 95 RON must be affordable, and a GM VP as saying how octane is increased under the standard doesn’t matter and that it can be achieved in several ways “such as by using more ethanol or by reducing heptane.”

Leone added that Ford supports renewable fuel but does not take a position on what type of production should get priority. “It’s conceivable there are other fuels out there” that are better than ethanol, he said.

But Renewable Fuels Assoc. (RFA) President and CEO Geoff Cooper disagrees. “Not all octane is created equal,” he told the ICGA Summit.

Aromatic hydrocarbons in petroleum that affect octane are also known human carcinogens. Since 2000, he said ethanol in fuel has increasingly replaced aromatics and olefins (another type of hydrocarbon bond) and cut those harmful emissions. An octane standard using ethanol, he said, makes sense to both boost octane and decrease emissions.

The RFA opposes the Flores-Shimkus proposal because it does not specify reducing aromatics or carbon emissions. Cooper said there are no specifications that protect the federal Renewable Fuel Standard that promotes manufacture of biofuel, beyond 2022.

If there is to be an octane standard, the RFA would like to see a RON of 98-100, plus a low-carbon emissions component to any such legislation, as well as a U.S. EPA waiver for an E30 blend.

A copy of the octane draft can be found online at https://flores.house.gov/uploadedfiles/21st-century-transportation-fuels-act-discussion-draft.pdf