Prospective life cycle assessment of alternatively fueled heavy-duty trucks

Abstract

The development of renewable drop-in diesel fuels is essential for decarbonizing the diesel-dominated heavy-duty fleet in the short to medium term. Therefore, the project ‘Robust and Efficient processes and technologies for Drop In renewable FUELs for road transport’ (REDIFUEL), developed a novel renewable fuel production technology. The novel fuel, named REDIFUEL, consists of a mixture of high-cetane hydrocarbons and C6-C11 alcohols. This work presents a complete well-to-wheel environmental assessment of REDIFUEL use in heavy-duty mild hybrid and plug-in long haul hybrid trucks with prospective Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). In addition, the use of REDIFUEL is compared to trucks fueled with fossil diesel, conventional biodiesel, and battery electric trucks. The LCA results showed a reduction in climate change impacts of 40–55% in 2030, and 27–64% in 2050 when REDIFUEL displaces fossil diesel. The sensitivity analysis showed that the feedstock value, the payload, and the allocation factor were the most important parameters affecting the climate change results. For most environmental impact categories, plug-in hybrid and battery electric long haul trucks had higher impacts than mild hybrid trucks fueled with REDIFUEL.