Benchmarking heavy-duty ethanol vehicles against diesel and CNG vehicles

Abstract

The Finnish energy company St1, producing waste-based ethanol, is working on high-concentration ethanol fuels together with the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. One example of the results of this cooperation is the high-concentration flex-fuel vehicle fuel (RE85) optimised for cold conditions, now available nationwide in Finland. The newest initiative is a field test with heavy-duty ethanol vehicles using Scania technology. In the preparatory phase, VTT carried out measurements on one ethanol bus and one ethanol truck. It turns out that Scania’s ethanol technology delivers fuel efficiency (in megajoules per kilometre) almost as good as conventional diesel engines, with particulate emission levels lower than the diesel average. For fuel efficiency, the ethanol engine clearly outpoints current natural gas engines. With these promising results, St1 took the decision to go ahead with field testing with three trucks, one delivery truck and two refuse vehicles. A monitoring programme of the field test vehicles has been set up. This paper describes exhaust emission and fuel consumption results of the ethanol vehicles, benchmarking the results against results from corresponding diesel and natural gas vehicles.