The Fuel of the Future

"Gasoline is growing scarcer, and therefore dearer, all the time... Automobiles cannot use gasoline for all time, of that I am sure, and alcohol seems to be the best substitute that has yet appeared." (US House and Senate hearings on the "Free Alcohol" bill, 1906)

The development of the internal combustion engine can be traced back to the early 19th century when at least a dozen inventors were involved with development of  prototypes. Two early pioneers, Samual Morey and Nicholas Otto, used ethyl alcohol to fuel their internal combustion engine prototypes.  Samuel Morey developed the first internal combustion engine in America in 1826.  Nicholas Otto, who eventually invented the "Otto-cycle" engine used ethyl alcohol on his early prototype of the internal combustion engine.  Progressing into the early 20th century there was much concern over the supply of gasoline.  President Roosevelt, a foe of the oil industry, initiated the repeal of the alcohol sales tax in 1906.  In theory, industrial alcohol would be a new market for American farmers and an alternative to the oil trust.  At the same time, British, French and German scientists were busily designing engines that could handle a variety of fuels, including ethyl alcohol.  These countries were not only worried about the longevity of oil supplies but also the erratic oil supply from Russia and America.  Oil trust battles between the Rothschilds, the Nobels, Rockefeller and Marcus Samuel (Shell)  resulted in significant oil price volatility.  France and Germany were particularly eager to develop a fuel that could be distilled from farm products as neither country had a domestic oil supply. Studies of alcohol as a fuel for internal combustion engines began in 1906 where it was found that significantly higher engine compression ratios could be achieved with alcohol but at lower B.T.U.  The fuel economy was virtually equal for alcohol and gasoline.  The U.S. Geological Service (USGS) later concluded that alcohol was "a more ideal fuel than gasoline" with better efficiency albeit with higher cost.  Alcohol had many advantages over gasoline with no smoke or disagreeable odors. By 1925, most people in the automotive industry, including Henry Ford, believed that ethyl alcohol was the "fuel of the future".  There were at least two events in history that prevented the widespread use of ethyl alcohol as an engine fuel.  The first event was the introduction of prohibition in the United States in 1919.  During prohibition the manufacture, transportation, import, export, and sale of alcoholic beverages was prohibited.  As a result, corn-alcohol stills, which many farmers used to make low cost ethanol fuel with, were banned.  Prohibition taxes were introduced for industrial alcohol usage, also causing a significant reduction in the use of ethanol as a fuel. In the early 1920s there was much concern about the demise of oil supplies.  "High quality oil" was becoming scarce and lower grade oil was being brought onto the market.  The use of low quality oil in cars resulted in engine knock.  Geological experts also believed that there would only be 20 to 30 years of oil stocks left in the United States.  As a result there was a great deal of work done investigating the useability of low quality oil in automobile engines.  Eventually GM selected tetra-ethyl lead (TEL) as an anti-knock gasoline additive.  We know this today as "leaded gasoline".  This solution was the most profitable alternative but GM would lead the public to believe that it was the only alternative.  Certainly there was pressure put on GM research to come up with a patentable solution.  There were certainly other viable additives including ethyl alcohol but was not patentable. This leads up to the second significant event which occurred in 1924 / 1925 timeframe.  17 workers died and many other workers were exposed to lead poisoning at two separate TEL manufacturing facilities.  Charles F. Kettering[1] and Thomas Midgley Jr.[2] subsequently told the government that no alternatives existed. "So far as science knows at the present time, tetraethyl lead is the only material available which can bring about these [antiknock] results, which are of vital importance to the continued economic use by the general public of all automotive equipment, and unless a grave and inescapable hazard exists in the manufacture of tetraethyl lead, its abandonment cannot be justified."  - Thomas Midgley Jr.  1925. In this era, farmers were hurting as a result of prohibition and desperately needed new markets to sell grain products in.  It was certainly plausible for the farm industry to produce enough ethanol to replace TEL as the anti-knock additive of choice. The Public Health Service, after investigating the accidents allowed leaded gasoline to remain on the market.   It is safe to say that in this particular instance the Public Health Service did not do their job.  Since 1926, the production and distribution of TEL has cost the health and lives of many workers.  The United States banned TEL in 1986, not because of health concerns, but because of it's adverse effect on exhaust catalysts.  Meanwhile, other countries such as the UK curtailed the use of alkyl leads due to the adverse health effects of lead emissions, especially on children.  Today the United States is a world leader in the production of ethanol with over 7 billion gallons of ethanol-blended  gasoline produced.  This represents approximately 12% of fuel sales including E85 (85% ethanol 15% gasoline) and E10 (10% ethanol 90% gasoline). [1] Charles F. Kettering headed up General Motors research division starting in 1919. [2] Thomas Midgley Jr. was Kettering's chief fuel researcher.  He developed both the tetra-ethyl lead (TEL) additive to gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).  One historian declared that Midgley "had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth history."