David Rickeard

Well-to-Wheels Analysis of Future Automotive Fuels and Powertrains in the European Context

A consortium of CONCAWE, EUCAR and the EU Commissions JRC carried out a Well-to-Wheels analysis of a wide range of\automotive fuels and powertrains. The study gives an assessment of the energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions for each pathway. It also considers macroeconomic costs and the market potential of alternative fuels.

Fuel effects on regulated emissions from modern gasoline vehicles

\ The influence of gasoline quality on exhaust emissions has been evaluated using four modern European gasoline cars with advanced features designed to improve fuel economy and CO 2 emissions, including stoichiometric direct injection, lean direct injection and MPI with variable valve actuation. Fuel effects studied included sulphur content, evaluated over a range from 4 to 148 mg/kg, and other gasoline properties, including aromatics content, olefins content, volatility and final boiling point (FBP). All four cars achieved very low emissions levels, with some clear differences between the vehicle technologies. Even at these low emissions levels, all four cars showed very little short-term sensitivity to gasoline sulphur content. The measured effects of the other gasoline properties were small and often conflicting, with differing directional responses for different vehicles and emissions.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Bioethanol and Bio-Diesel Fuel Supply Systems

Publisher Summary Systems produce bio-diesel by the extraction of oils from crops, transesterifation with, for example, methanol to make fatty acid esters and glycerol, followed by removal of glycerol. Yields of biofuels from commercial systems are determined by the yield of sugar, starch, or plant oils extracted from harvested crops and the conversion efficiency to ethanol or bio-diesel. Analyses of the yield, energy consumption, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for current systems to produce ethanol and bio-diesel have been reviewed in this chapter in the context of European Union (EU-15) application. Energy consumption and net GHG emissions are compared on a per unit fuel and per unit land basis for various systems—corn, sugar cane, wheat, and sugar beet to ethanol; and rapeseed to rape methyl ester (RME). Gross yield of RME is approximately 1 toe ha-1, ethanol from wheat 1.2 toe ha-1, and ethanol from sugar beet 3.4 toe ha-1, limiting the quantity of gasoline or diesel fuel use that could be replaced by biofuels using set-aside land available in the EU-15. Energy consumption for crop production and processing to make ethanol or RME in current processes account for about 58-106% of the produced RME or ethanol fuel energy content. Avoided GHG emissions resulting from gasoline or diesel fuel use replaced by biofuels, accounting for fuel system energy use, and crediting GHG offsets for animal feed byproducts, result in 0.4 tCeq ha-1 for ethanol from wheat, 1.3 tCeq ha-1 for ethanol from sugar beet, 0.6 tCeq ha-1 for RME with a wide range of uncertainty stemming from, for example, uncertainty in agricultural N2O emissions and byproduct credits. Fluxes of avoided GHG emissions from these biofuel production systems are found to be much less than those from afforestation or reforestation in temperate regions.