Ethanol provides for fewer emissions and less pollution.
One of the major barriers to using ethanol is the length of time needed to start engines with the fuel at cold temperatures. The UT team was able to reduce this time to two seconds. It was really exciting but to some extent we knew we were going to win. A team from the University has entered the competition three times in previous years, but this year's team is the University's first winner. Darius Mehta, a UT mechanical engineering graduate student, said he was not so certain about the results.