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The fossil fuel is consumed faster than last century. However, the fossil fuel reserves might be depleted due to its limited resources. Many researchers have started to seek alternative of fossil fuels for vehicles. Biofuels are regarded as a shorten-solution which synthesizes some additive fuel from bio-materials into fossil fuel to reduce fossil fuel consumption and can be applied on original fuel supplying system of vehicles that becomes another advantage. This paper focuses on studying the operation characteristics of using gasohol biofuel in a production motorcycle engine. Engine experiments with various test conditions are designed to investigate the operation characteristics with different concentration of ethanol. The ethanol concentrations considered in this paper include 10%, 20%, 50%, 65%, and 80% by weight, which are then compared with the results from pure gasoline.

This paper describes the test results of low concentration butanol gasoline as fuel on motorcycle. It contains an immerse test to study material compatibility of 50% n-butanol gasoline(nB50) with some rubber, thermoplastics and Aluminum alloy usually used on motorcycle engine fuel system. An engine dyno test which is to compare the combustion characteristics of 20% n-butanol-gasoline (nB20) and gasoline. And an vehicle emission and fuel test which is to evaluate nB20 fuel emission characteristics and compliance of Taiwan motorcycles emission standards. The results shown there is no malfunction concern to use nB20 as fuel on the fuel injection motorcycle designed for gasoline. However, the NOx exhaust increase is a common issue of Alcohol alternative fuels on motorcycle.

In order to improve the fuel economy and CO2 emission for motorcycles, manufacturers have developed and commercialized motorcycles equipped with idle-stop (also known as stop-start) systems. Some test data have shown that such motorcycles may cause 55% more exhaust emissions over the test driving cycle when idle-stop function is on, and fail to meet the functionality expectations of reducing emissions from such motorcycles. Two market sold idle-stop motorcycle types were tested on chassis dynamometer to investigate their transient exhaust emissions over six different driving cycles with idle-stop function on and off separately. Further more, the feasibility of emissions improvement by adjusting ECU calibration was also evaluated.