Browse Topic: Synthetic fuels
Efuels, synthetic gasolines made from captured carbon dioxide and renewable energy (usually wind and solar power), are “a valuable part of the solution,” said Aston Martin CEO Adrian Hallmark at a press briefing in New York on January 31. He described the process of creating the fuel as “really clean,” but also cited a rather off-putting price: $31 a gallon in the U.S. Still, Hallmark thinks eFuels could be a way for Aston to continue producing at least a few V12-powered cars in the coming electric future. Other automakers agree, but the battle over eFuels has by no means reached a cease-fire.
Toyota, Mazda and Subaru announced a new technological effort to create new internal combustion engines and ways to use them in the electrification era, specifically for hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles. The companies said at a joint press conference in Japan that they would encourage increased use of petroleum alternatives like biofuels and eFuels in their effort to create carbon-neutral vehicles. A joint statement from the three OEMs claims this push for new and better ICEs comes with a focus on “carbon as the enemy” as they develop engines that can better work with electric motors, batteries, and other electric drive units. Toyota, Mazda and Subaru made clear they are not getting rid of EV-only vehicle plans. Here's how each company will approach the new ICE+EV era (quotes provided in English by on-site interpreters).
As I was working on this issue's cover story - a look at the current state of low- and no-carbon fuels and the potential they hold - the cyclical nature of life made itself readily apparent (once again). I will warn those of you who were involved in the automotive industry a decade or two ago that you might experience similar flashbacks when you read about how eFuels could, if everything works the way it's supposed to, provide a way for much of today's internal combustion engines to power legitimately zero-new-emission vehicles, especially in regions of the world where EVs don't yet make sense. That's great. Well, it sounds great, at least. The many promises made by producers and researchers of synthetic fuels sound strikingly similar to what the companies supporting biofuels were saying back when George W. Bush was still president. The fuel is cleaner, they said. We can keep (some of) the same infrastructure, or just modify it slightly, they said. This will work with EVs to make the
Low-carbon fuels promise greener alternatives, but can they deliver? Even as electric vehicles dominate today's alternative powertrain market for passenger cars, the future of how we will all someday drive without burning petroleum is cloudier than ever. To decarbonize transportation, governments and companies around the world are promoting various future technologies, including hydrogen and synthetic fuels, as alternatives to the alternative. In the U.S., the road to a hydrogen future recently hit a few road-blocks. In February 2024, Shell announced it would dramatically scale back its H2 refueling station plans in California and close some of its few stations. This dealt a blow to local H2-vehicle drivers as well as the state's plans for a robust hydrogen infrastructure. When Hyundai announced in October 2021 that it would support Shell's plans to add 48 additional H2 refueling stations in California, it said that “hydrogen refueling infrastructure growth is critical to rapidly
In the rapidly changing scenario of the energy transition, data-driven tools for kinetic mechanism development and testing can greatly support the evaluation of the combustion properties of new potential e-fuels. Despite the effectiveness of kinetic mechanism generation and optimization procedures and the increased availability of experimental data, integrated methodologies combining data analysis, kinetic simulations, chemical lumping, and kinetic mechanism optimization are still lacking. This paper presents an integrated workflow that combines recently developed automated tools for kinetic mechanism development and testing, from data collection to kinetic model reduction and optimization. The proposed methodology is applied to build a consistent, efficient, and well-performing kinetic mechanism for the combustion of oxymethylene ethers (OMEs), which are promising synthetic e-fuels for transportation. In fact, OMEs are easily mixed with conventional fuels and share similar ignition
The EV bandwagon has obscured potential solutions for decarbonizing the enormous global ICE legacy fleet. Put the promise of mass vehicle electrification and its myriad challenges aside for a moment, and consider: What if most IC-engine vehicle owners don't switch to EVs as the industry and regulators hope they will? And how long will it take to alter the existing global vehicle parc, estimated at more than one billion mostly ICE-powered vehicles, to the extent its greenhouse-gas emissions are insignificant in the crusade to achieve net-zero (and thwart global warming) by 2050?
In a surprising move that paves the way for the European Union's adoption of a mandate to eliminate vehicle CO2 emissions, on March 25 the EU reached an agreement with Germany to step back from a complete ban of combustion-engine vehicles starting in 2035. The EU agreed to permit sales and registration of IC-engine models after the 2035 deadline - provided those vehicles operate only on carbon-neutral fuels, often generically referred to as ‘e-fuels.’ With a significant portion of its economy related to the historically ICE-based automotive industry, Germany had resisted the EU's total ban, although its Parliament's Green Party supported the forced sunsetting of ICE passenger vehicles. Reuters reported German Transport Minister Volker Wissing as tweeting, “We secure opportunities for Europe by preserving important options for climate-neutral and affordable mobility.” In another Twitter post, Wissing reportedly added, “Vehicles with internal combustion engines can still be newly
The development of carbon-neutral e-fuels enjoyed a major boost from European regulators, but production cost and scale remain issues. Synthetic and bio-based liquid “e-fuels” have in various forms enjoyed fits and starts of industry attention and R&D investment in recent years. They got the most significant boost ever in March 2023 when a politically charged deal between the European Union and Germany brokered an exemption in the EU's mandate for sales only of EVs starting in 2035. The agreement allows manufacturers to continue selling internal-combustion models after the 2035 deadline - but only if they run on carbon-neutral e-fuels. In an instant, e-fuels were guaranteed a market all to themselves. It remains to be seen whether e-fuels - at least in their current state of technology - can answer the call. But as some supporters enthused after the EU's escort of e-fuels into the post-EV landscape, developers have more than a decade to address technical challenges and concerns about
Amazon has a goal of having 50% of its shipments being made net-zero carbon by 2030. In 2021, more than 100 million packages were delivered to customers with zero-emissions vehicles and the company said that number will scale. One of the retail and logistics giant's well-known initiatives is its pledge to purchase 100,000 Rivian electric delivery vehicles by 2030. Initial vehicles were delivered and put into operation in July 2022. In September, Amazon announced another initiative that by next year will replace diesel fuel in its internal-combustion delivery vehicles with ultra-low carbon ‘electrofuels.’ The supplier of that fuel to Amazon is Sacramento, Calif.-based Infinium.
Vehicle manufacturers are facing increasing legislative pressure to reduce vehicle emissions and achieve zero tailpipe CO2 emissions within the coming decade. The focus on techniques to reduce the tailpipe CO2 emissions, rather than vehicle lifecycle emissions, naturally dictates electrified solutions. However, this will not address the increased emissions resulting from vehicle manufacture, the emissions of the legacy fleet, or enable niche or classic applications, to be decarbonised for future use. The use of bio-derived fuels, and fully synthetic fuels, can provide a technical solution to these challenges, but it is beneficial if these can be used as a drop-in replacement to existing fossil derived fuels, as this would enable straight-forward backward compatibility with existing vehicles and avoid the need to re-engineer future engine designs or upgrade existing hardware. The present study investigates the use of 100% bio-derived fuel in a spark-ignited internal combustion engine
The continuous pursuit of higher combustion efficiencies, as well as the possible usage of synthetic fuels with different properties than fossil-ones, require reliable and low-cost numerical approaches to support and speed-up engines industrial design. In this context, SI engines operated with homogeneous ultra-lean mixtures both characterized by a classical ignition configuration or equipped with an active prechamber represent the most promising solutions. In this work, for the classical ignition arrangement, a 3DCFD strategy to model the impact of the ignition system type on the CCV is developed using the RANS approach for turbulence modelling. The spark-discharge is modelled through a set of Lagrangian particles, whose velocity is modified with a zero-divergence perturbation at each discharge event, then evolved according to the Simplified Langevin Model (SLM) to simulate stochastic interactions with the surrounding gas flow. For the active prechamber configuration, instead, a CFD
The new CO2 and emissions limits imposed to European manufacturers require the adoption of different innovative solutions, such as the use of potentially CO2-neutral synthetic fuels alongside a tailored development of the internal combustion engine, as an excellent solution to accompany the hybridization of vehicles. Dr.Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG and FKFS, already partners for the development of engines with eFuels, propose a new study carried out on a research engine, investigating the combination of Porsche synthetic gasoline (POSYN) with an engine with millerization and passive pre-chamber. The use of CO2-neutral fuels allow for an immediate reduction in CO2 emissions from all cars already on the market, particularly since Porsche is one of the manufacturers whose cars remain in use for the longest time. The data collected on a single-cylinder engine test bench, for different fuels, with conventional spark plug are used as input for the calibration of 3D-CFD simulations. The numerical
The development of future gasoline engines is dominated by the study of new technologies aimed at reducing the engine negative environmental impact and increase its thermal efficiency. One common trend is to develop smaller engines able to operate in stoichiometric conditions across the whole engine map for better efficiency, lower fuel consumption, and optimal conversion rate of the three-way catalyst (TWC). Water injection is one promising technique, as it significantly reduces the engine knock tendency and avoids fuel enrichment for exhaust temperature mitigation at high power operation. With the focus on reducing the carbon footprint of the automotive sector, another vital topic of research is the investigation of new alternative CO2-neutral fuels or so-called eFuels. Several studies have already shown how these new synthetic fuels can be produced by exploiting renewable energy sources and can significantly reduce engine emissions. This work is part of the FVV project number 1367
Knocking is one of today’s main limitations in the ongoing efforts to increase efficiency and reduce emissions of spark-ignition engines. Especially for synthetic fuels or any alternative fuel type in general with a much steeper increase of the knock frequency at the KLSA, such as hydrogen, precise knock prediction is crucial to exploit their full potential. This paper therefore proposes a post-processing tool enabling further investigations to continuously gain better understanding of the knocking phenomenon. In this context, evaluation of local auto-ignitions preceding knock is crucial to improve knowledge about the stochastic occurrence of knock but also identify critical engine design to further optimize the geometry. In contrast to 0D simulations, 3D CFD simulations provide the possibility to investigate local parameters in the cylinder during the combustion. Measurement of auto-ignition yields challenges regarding the small time frame of the phenomenon and the required optical
Renewable synthetic fuels offer the opportunity to significantly reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions worldwide if burned in the internal combustion engines of existing and future passenger car fleets. To evaluate this potential, two renewable synthetic gasoline fuels and alcohol blends that can be produced via the methanol-to-gasoline (MtG) synthesis process are evaluated in this study. The first synthetic gasoline, hereafter referred to as MtG, was developed by Chemieanlagenbau Chemnitz GmbH and Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg, produced within the closed carbon cycle mobility (C3-Mobility) project, and was blended with 10%(V/V) ethanol (MtG-E10), 20%(V/V) ethanol (MtG-E20), 15%(V/V) methanol (MtG-M15), and 15%(V/V) 2-butanol (MtG-2Bu15). The second synthetic fuel, named POSYN (POrsche SYNthetic fuel), was developed by Porsche. The suitability of the synthetic fuels was experimentally investigated in a spark-ignition (SI) single-cylinder research engine with a
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