New Diesel Fuels

It is the general opinion that the liquid biofuels like alcohols in the future should be used where there are no

other realistic alternatives when the availability of fossil fuels are reduced, this means mainly for trucks,

ships and airplains. In this context many international organizations like the IEA Advanced Motor Fuels

Implementing Agreement (IEAAMF) foresee a lack of diesel fuels in the near future. Alcohols are excellent

fuels for spark ignition engines, due to the high octane numbers, but poor diesel fuels unless ignition

improvers or dual fuel concepts are used. Therefore this project has been established by IEAAMF in order

to investigate the possibilities to apply alcohols in diesel engines.

The idea with the project is to characterize and evaluate future alcohol application in compression ignition

engines by evaluating existing information and data and by carrying out engine tests with alternative

additives and different alcohol/diesel fuels.

This involves studying of ethanol fuel formulations and bio-origin additives and components, which would be

compatible with current compression ignition ethanol engines. The second objective is to study ”flex fuel”

ethanol/diesel engine options, which can use both ethanol and diesel fuel without pilot injection. This

implies both possibilities to develop new ethanol fuels and ethanol diesel engine concepts.

In a separate workpackage a review of alcohol application in diesel engines will be carried out based on

existing knowledge.

In workpackage 2, at VTT, Finland, ethanol application in a diesel engine will furthermore be studied in the

latest technology compression igntion ethanol engine from Scania.This involves test of several fuel and

additive combinations and also studies of different fuel systems. An important goal is to look for

possibilities to develop engine concepts that can run on both alcohol fuels and pure diesel.

Analysis of applicability of ethanol in a diesel engine based on the mentioned workpackages will be carried

out at DTU, Denmark (workpackage 3).

The project will be carried out under the umbrella of IEA Advanced Motor Fuels Implementing Agreement

and in collaboration with the IEA Combustion Implementing Agreement. The work will result in a final report

that compile information from the mentioned workpackages, but also include reporting on the related work

from IEA Combustion Implementing Agreement. This part and management of the project in general is

taken care of by DTU, Denmark.