May. The group received honors for demonstrating both their engineering prowess and the commercial promise of ethanol, a corn-based fuel. That required a lot of painstaking tinkering with the engine and controls on the part of the students. The secondary air-injection system designed by the UIC team picked up unburned raw fuel that remained in the exhaust stream after combustion, thereby reducing hydrocarbon emissions. But we are especially proud of our design for cold-starting the engine.
Ethanol is less volatile than gasoline, so the engine can be difficult to start when cold.
We had to heat the air and fuel to eliminate this tendency. The team arranged for the air to flow over electrically heated coils. And they warmed the fuel by bringing it near engine coolant that had been heated during a previous driving cycle and stored in a kind of super-insulating thermos. I am pleased that through efforts like the Ethanol Vehicle Challenge, we are able to accelerate the development and improve the performance of alternative fuel vehicles. Last fall, General Motors donated a standard gasoline-powered Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck, a spare engine and other parts to each team.