USE OF ETHANOL IN DIESEL – CYCLE ENGINES

Moreira, Jose Roberto; Velázquez, Sílvia M. S. G.; Melo, Euler Hoffmann;

Resumo:

The global fuel option for urban public transport is diesel, a fossil source of energy which is produced from the fractional distillation of petroleum. The diesel fuel is the most important fuel in the Brazilian Automotive Energy Matrix, accounting for 51.2% of the total volume of fuel consumed in 2008, as shown in Figure 1. Other type of fuels, such as gasoline or ethanol, have not been commonly used in the urban public transport. However, some initiatives have been taken in order to search for new technologies with lower environmental impact. One of the initiatives in order to diversify the automotive energy portfolio and partially replace the diesel is the production of biodiesel (B100). However, this option cannot meet the total diesel demand based in the available known technology. On the other hand, ethanol fuel from biomass, a renewable fuel with low emission of pollutants if compared to diesel or gasoline, has only been used in spark ignition engines (Otto cycle), due to technical limitation prohibiting the use of ethanol in Diesel cycle engines. Beyond that, Brazil already has an infrastructure for large-scale production of ethanol that could supply a significant diesel demand in the shorter term. Technological improvements have provided, in the last decade, a Diesel cycle engine which runs on ethanol blended with a clean additive, whose applicability is the same as conventional diesel engine and, therefore, the automotive energy portfolio can be diversified with ethanol, which is a renewable fuel and less polluting than the diesel. The Diesel cycle engine adapted to operate with ethanol has been developed and it is already commercially available. In Brazil, this technology has been transferred through the BEST Project – BioEthanol for Sustainable Transport (BEST, 2006)1. The project is an initiative of the European Union, coordinated by the city of Stockholm, which aims to encourage the use of ethanol as a fuel for urban public transport and as a replacement for diesel in Brazil and in the world. São Paulo, the pioneer city in the America, has demonstrated the technical and economical performance of buses which are fuelled with ethanol in order to seek an alternative for reduction in the consumption of fossil fuels and, therefore, a reduction in emission of pollutants from the transport sector. This concern is due to the fact that the city of São Paulo, with 10.8 million2 inhabitants, is the greatest urban center of São Paulo Metropolitan Region, which has more than 19.4 million inhabitants. São Paulo Metropolitan Region is the fourth greatest urban center of the world3. This center is responsible for 18% of the Brazilian GDP4 (US$ 247 billions per year) and where roughly 3.2 million5 people are transported every day through 13,726 urban buses6, almost all of them fuelled by diesel oil. These Figures generate stakeholders concern regarding pollutants emissions due the use of diesel, which is harmful to the environment as well as to the health of the people who live in São Paulo.

Part 4 — A new Model for Industrial Production and final uses of ethanol :

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DOI: 10.5151/BlucherOA-Sugarcane-SUGARCANEBIOETHANOL_70

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Como citar:

MOREIRA, Jose Roberto; VELáZQUEZ, Sílvia M. S. G.; MELO, Euler Hoffmann; "USE OF ETHANOL IN DIESEL – CYCLE ENGINES", p. 841 -852. In: Sugarcane bioethanol — R&D for Productivity and Sustainability. São Paulo: Blucher, .
ISBN: 978-85-212-0822-8, DOI 10.5151/BlucherOA-Sugarcane-SUGARCANEBIOETHANOL_70