Methane–hydrogen fuel blends for SI engines in Brazilian public transport: Potential supply and environmental issues

Abstract

In the last decades, the whole world has been feeling the effects of environmental pollution, especially air pollution in large cities, with the transport sector as a major contributor to this scenario. In this sense, Brazil presents 27 states with great potential for biogas generation from landfills through anaerobic digestion. Only in the year 2016, the calculations presented in this paper point to a methane production in landfills of 5.57E+09 m3. On the other hand, the high number of rivers and hydroelectric dams in the country makes possible the generation of electricity that reached 90.27 TWh in 2016. However, the water that is drained by the floodgates to control the level of the reservoirs becomes an interesting wasted energy source for other uses, such as the production of other clean fuel, hydrogen, through classical processes such as electrolysis. It is pointed out the possibility of producing 2.76E+06 tons of hydrogen only with the energy drained in these hydroelectric plants. These two fuels together can be used to fuel vehicles powered by the hydrogen–methane blends, like HBio95 and HBio60. The promise of harmful and CO2 emissions by focusing on mixture of gases has recently attracted the interest of vehicle manufacturers and transport operators. In this scenario, this work presents an analysis on the use of mixture of gases in the urban bus fleet of the 27 Brazilian states, using as energy source derived from secondary energy from Brazilian hydroelectric plants and biogas from sanitary landfills, comparing this scenario with the use of only methane from landfills or only H2 from hydroelectric plants, assessing issues such as pollutant emissions, engine performance and deployment facilities.