A team of researchers from the Michigan Technology Researchers was awarded a $1.5 million grant for developing flex-fuel hybrid vehicles. The lead investigator of the team is Jeff Naber, an associate professor of mechanical engineering and the director of the university\'s Advanced Power Systems Research Center. The funding for the grant was provided by the university, General Motors, Sensors Inc. of Saline, and the Transportation Technology R&D Center of the Argonne National Laboratory.

Members of the team include Jay Meldrum of the Keweenaw Research Center; John Beard and Donna Michalek, associate professors of mechanical engineering-engineering mechanics; Jerry Worm, a staff engineer at the Advanced Power Systems Research Center and Seong-Young Lee, Abhijit Mukherjee and Scott Miers, assistant professors of mechanical engineering-engineering mechanics. The team is under the Wood to Wheels Program of the Michigan Technology University. The Wood to Wheels Program is meant to maximize the utilization and improve the lifecycle of bioenergy from the forest resources of the state of Michigan.

The project will be undertaken with the Argonne National Laboratory. Team members will conduct research in the Transportation Technology R&D Center of Argonne.

The researchers will work to address the issues of emissions and mileage when using flex-fuel hybrid engines. Research will study fuel and combustion systems of flex-fuel hybrid vehicles. The problem with flex-fuel hybrid engines is they can burn any type of fuel from gasoline to E85 but Ethanol requires more energy to vaporize and contains only 63% of the energy stored in gasoline while gasoline can cause a knock in engine that would otherwise run smoothly on ethanol. Unless the researchers discover a way to make these fuels adapt on the right flex-fuel hybrid engine then there won\'t be a flex-fuel hybrid vehicle available because emissions and mileage are compromised. The team aims to create a four-cylinder engine that can meet the emissions standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency.

If the project is successful, the resulting technologies will be used to manufacture vehicles from General Motors. The vehicles should be able to meet the 2020 CAFE emissions standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The Michigan Technology University, founded in 1885 during the first mining boom in the United States, was first named the Michigan Mining School. In the beginning the University offered training for mining and metallurgical engineers. The school became the Michigan Technology University in 1964. Today, the university offers undergraduate, doctoral degrees and certificate courses on a wide range of fields in the arts, humanities, social sciences, business economics, computing, forestry, engineering, environmental science and other fields of science and technology.

Research funding in the university continues to grow and reaches about $ 40 million annually. This is because the university has built a good reputation for its research projects. The Michigan Technology University continues to be one of the leading technology universities with the some of the strongest research programs in the whole of United States. The Michigan Technology University has really come a long way from its beginnings as a mining school.