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O2Diesel Adds E3 Biofuels as CityHome Sponsor
29 March 2006
E3 Biofuels, the developer of a manure-powered integrated ethanol plant in Mead, Nebraska (earlier post), has joined O2Diesel’s CityHome program as a sponsor. CityHome helps subnsidize the adoption of O2Diesel’s ethanol-diesel blend by transit and school bus fleets.
StarTran Transit of Lincoln, NE was the first fleet to adopt CityHome and has now successfully completed one year of using O2Diesel. StarTran reduced the petroleum portion of the fuel utilized by 8%, and it is estimated that they have reduced their diesel emissions by four tons.
CityHome sponsors for StarTran in 2005 included Performance Automotive, Nebraska Ethanol Board, Nebraska Corn Board, Nebraska Corn Growers Association and Clear Channel Radio.
The E3 Biofuels plant is a completely integrated technology system (a corn field, feedlot, ethanol plant, and waste digester) for producing corn, ethanol, milk, cheese and beef with little to no fossil fuel consumed in the process.
O2Diesel uses 7.7% ethanol, with up to 1% proprietary additive and a cetane improver. In tests against conventional diesel, O2Diesel reduces CO emissions by up to 26%; NOx emissions by up to 5%; and PM emissions by up to 40%.
In November 2005, Abengoa Bioenergy R&D (ABRD), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Abengoa Bioenergy, one of the world’s largest producers of biofuels, acquired 10% of O2Diesel in an investment worth €3 million (US$3,588,000). (Earlier post.)
March 29, 2006 in Diesel, Ethanol, Fleets | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)
Comments
Posted by: Rafael Seidl | March 29, 2006 at 10:55 AM
Rafael, is octane rating relevant? Isn't the US market dominated by relatively low compression ratio gasoline engines which won't take advantage of the octane boost? My understanding is that without increased compression there is no power advantage, and that even with increased compression there is no mileage advantage.
Posted by: dimitris | March 29, 2006 at 11:05 AM
The point to adding 7.7% alcohol to diesel fuel is to increase the oxygen,clean the engine and reduce emissions. It also gives about the same milage with 7.7% less fossil fuel use.
Posted by: Lucas | March 29, 2006 at 11:11 AM
Dimitris -
the point is not so much increasing octane rating as maintaining it now that MTBE is being abandoned for fear of legal liabilities. Longer-term, carmakers could increase geometric compression ratios if 87 octane were phased out in favor of 91. European cars all use Super grade, which is 95 octane (albeit measured differently, cp. ~91 US). Compression ratios of 10 are in series production for for turbocharged and 11.5 for gasoline direct injection engines.
Power and efficiency do of course not go up significantly by using a higher fuel grade than the engine was designed for.
Lucas -
no doubt O2Diesel works, it's just that you can achieve similar benfits on the diesel side by blending with FAME or BTL. On the gasoline side, ethanol is pretty much the only game in town unless you want to take the risk of using poisonous methanol (cp. NASCAR).
Btw: Whenever you add any oxygenate, you're addding a partially "burnt" compound. The energy per volume of the mixture goes down and so does your operating range on a full tank of gas. That's just the laws of chemistry.
Posted by: Rafael Seidl | March 29, 2006 at 02:56 PM
Methanol is much less toxic than gasoline, and is not bioaccumulative. the problem is that methanol is easily mistook as ethanol, and is drinken as alcohol (big problem in Russia). Meanwhile methanol is routinely added in substantial quantities to windshield washer fluid...
Posted by: Andrey | March 31, 2006 at 01:03 AM
Newsletter about bio fuels
Posted by: Igbokwe | April 26, 2006 at 11:50 PM
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IMHO, all available ethanol should be blended into gasoline to improve the octane rating and reduce the GHG footprint. There is a greater range of alternatives for diesel fuel.