Historically, burning ethanol in 4 stokes engine was first developped in the USA at the beginning ot 20th century.

Early days tractors and other farming equipments were powered by 4 strokes ignition engines designed to run on alcohol (ethanol) that was locally produced from corn...
This quite successful development ended abruptly with enforcement of prohibition and the carburettors of those engine were transformed to use gas.
For some of these engines, a special spacer had to be fitted between cylinder block and heads to reduce compression ratio that was too high for the low octane gas of these days.

In Europe mecanization of farming came later, without this ethanol period.
Nowadays, there is a little development of "crude vegetable oil" (ie locally produced colza oil) burnt pure or mixed in diesel oil by farming equipment diesel engines.



   Philippe DEJEAN

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