A desire to reduce dependency to imported petrol lets them to be creative with what they already have.
Brazil, however, has seen it all before. In the mid-1970s, the government initiated the “Proalcool” programme to convert sugar cane into ethanol with the aim of becoming the first country in the world to convert to renewable fuel.
Its motives were the same as in America today — independence from imported oil — but the reasons were entirely economic rather than due to concerns over security of supply or the environment.
It was a happy coincidence that Brazil’s ethanol-powered cars produced 50% less greenhouse gases than equivalent petrol engines.
Sales of ethanol cars dropped to almost zero by 1997 and stayed that way until the idea was revived in 2003 when oil prices started to rise again.
This time the ethanol cars had an important difference: “flexi-fuel”. Today’s models can run on both petrol and ethanol. A computer control unit detects what kind of fuel is in use and adjusts the engine accordingly. It was developed in Brazil by Magneti Marelli, the electronic-component company that is part of Fiat.
The government’s new idea is to promote CNG (compressed natural gas). Brazil has large reserves of natural gas and access to further supplies from neighbouring Bolivia.
CNG is cheap — the cost per kilometre is less than half that of petrol and alcohol.
Magneti Marelli has risen to the challenge with its Tetrafuel system. This is a single-engine, electronic-control unit that can detect and automatically switch between CNG and liquid fuel which can be 100% petrol, 100% ethanol, or any combination of the two.
Page 1 from Times Online
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Have a look at Magneti Marelli TetraFuel Technology
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