Gentlemen: Start your chainsaws ...

www.chicagotribune.com

Higher Ethanol blend to make your chainsaw go crazy?

By Joshua Boak

Tribune staff reporter

11:20 AM CDT, April 1, 2009

Picture a chainsaw calmly idling. But then its blade suddenly starts spinning on its own, as if someone had goosed the throttle.

The power equipment industry warns that such a scenario could happen if the federal government agrees to increase the percentage of ethanol mixed into gasoline. Upping the ethanol content would add more oxygen to the fuel, causing the engine to idle at a higher speed and literally fooling the chainsaw into acting as though its clutch were engaged.

"For us, it's principally a safety issue," said Kris Kiser, executive vice president of the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute. "We make bladed and clutch equipment that is inherently dangerous."

On Wednesday a coalition backed by the power equipment, petroleum, boating and automobile industries voiced concerns to the Senate Clean Air and Nuclear Safety subcommittee that a higher ethanol mix could destroy engines, in addition to voiding warranties on vehicles designed for a 10 percent ethanol blend.

"We must ensure that these blends are safe for consumers, do not harm gasoline-powered engines," Charles Drevna, president of the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association, told senators on behalf of the coalition.

The subcommittee is reviewing the oversight of biofuels by the Environmental Protection Agency, which primarily considers automobile emissions and not consumer safety when approving fuel standards. Growth Energy, an ethanol-backed interest group, asked the EPA in March to increase the ethanol blend to 15 percent. Because the agency has until December to examine the issue, Growth Energy has asked that the blend be temporarily raised to 12 or 13 percent. Last month, Agriculture Department Secretary Tom Vilsack called on the EPA to adopt the temporary increase. President Barack Obama championed ethanol while a senator from Illinois. His stimulus package raised the tax credit gas stations would receive for installing pumps for flex-fuel vehicles, which can run on gasoline or an 85 percent ethanol mixture.

Fears of damaged cars, boats or lawnmowers are overblown, contend ethanol producers. "Engines can compensate for differences in fuel," said Michael Harrigan, a former Ford Motor Co. engineer who consults for Growth Energy. "I don't think there should be an issue."

Ethanol producers also point out that engine settings can be readjusted for higher ethanol blends, and consumers could still buy gasoline mixed with lower amounts of ethanol for power equipment, eliminating any chainsaw horror stories.

But a key obstacle in the debate is that no one knows the long-term consequences of motors running on a higher ethanol blend. An ongoing study, which the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado updated in February, has so far only measured the short-term effects of multiple ethanol blends in the engines of cars and leaf blowers, among other power equipment.

"Both sides are a bit premature," said Keith Knoll, the study's senior project leader at the National Renewable Energy Lab. "This is part of a much larger study that needs to be finished before any broad sweeping conclusions are drawn."

Knoll expects to complete the study in early 2010.

Chainsaws were not part of the study, although the clutch engagement problem was seen when testing higher ethanol blends in grass trimmers. The engine temperature in power equipment increased with greater ethanol blends, while engine temperatures in almost half of the vehicles tested increased with higher blends. Opponents say the higher temperatures could ware engines prematurely. Tailpipe emissions were largely unaffected by adding more ethanol to gasoline, the study showed.

Economic pressures led ethanol producers to seek a higher blend, which could improve demand for the corn-based fuel and possibly resurrect an industry that has shut down almost 20 percent of its refinery capacity due to bankruptcies and financial losses as gasoline prices have retreated.

The Senate subcommittee hearings were ostensibly about EPA oversight of the renewable fuels standard, which sets annual production targets that ethanol refiners are supposed to meet.

Reaching the targets could be a problem at the existing blending levels. If the levels are unchanged, refiners could fall 1.6 billion gallons short of the 12.3 billion gallons they are supposed to produce next year, according to research by Martha Schlicher, vice president of Illinois River Energy, a Rochelle, Ill. ethanol refiner.

Having a mandate for more ethanol production and a fixed limit on how much ethanol can be mixed with gasoline is a "Catch-22," said Schlicher, since the policies hinder each other.

Ford Motor is the lone automaker to endorse increasing the blend, according to a February letter the company sent Poet LLC, a South Dakota ethanol refinery firm.

Other automakers worry that the higher blend could void warranties and corrode engines, said Charles Territo, a spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, whose members include General Motors, Chrysler, Toyota and Volkswagen.

"What's at stake here is the operation of more than 240 million vehicles," Territo said. "What we're saying is before we make any decisions about allowing midlevel blends of ethanol for the majority of vehicles on the road, we need to do more research."

jboak@tribune.com

Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune