Statewide Iowa — Iowa’s largest manufacturing employer is partnering with a Chicago-area company to reduce harmful emissions from its equipment by replacing diesel fuel with ethanol.
Quad Cities-based John Deere is working with ClearFlame Engine Technologies of Geneva, Illinois, where CEO BJ Johnson says their initial work was on a Cummins X-15 engine from an on-road semi.
The goal will be to migrate the technology into tractors, combines, excavators and other heavy equipment. Johnson says the next step is for Deere to supply an engine that’s used in a range of its equipment, which ClearFlame will modify in its lab.
Johnson says using corn-based ethanol instead of diesel can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 45 to 50 percent, with even bigger reductions possible in the future. The word “burning” doesn’t always have to be bad, Johnson says, as it depends on what you’re burning.
Johnson says this research could help boost the rural economy, especially in Iowa, the nation’s number-one ethanol producer. Today, the US is producing about 17 billion gallons of ethanol a year, and every one-percent of trucks converted to burning ethanol can result in the need to produce another billion gallons of the fuel.
