Ethanol and Torque?
 

Was reading this: https://www.dartmouth.edu/~dfr/fall05_newsletter.pdf

They say that the turbo and the switch to e85 increases torque 20%, wtf is this I'm hearing about e85 and torque? Is it just the octane advantage or is it something else?

The turbo's actually what's responsible for the large increase, since I doubt they can run 105 octane lean enough to increase torque by 20% with stock air flow. The E85 helps of course, but if the engine was run with gas and a turbo, there would be a much more significant increase in torque (provided fueling was available) compared to the modest increase by being able to advance timing and run a bit leaner on E85. Course I'm not exactly sure how much greater than stoich you can run with higher octane fuels, so i could be totally wrong.

It's probably like saying "Adding the JATO and a slightly larger crank sprocket to my bicycle allowed me to attain a MUCH higher top speed."

Both are contributing factors, but one greatly overshadows the other.

Ethanol does have a higher octane than gas, but the biggest reason for more torque and power is its heat of vaporization, which is higher than gas.

It takes more heat to vaporize a stoichiometric amount of ethanol than gas. Thus, the incoming air gets cooler. Cold air is more dense, meaning that a greater mass of air is drawn into the cylinders and thus more fuel can be burned. This increases the torque.

Hmm, very interesting stuff. I'm going to have to learn something about cars before I go bugging those damn engineers, currently I know very little, *cry*