NICOP - RENEWABLE DIESEL BLEND FOR MARINE APPLICATION: Sugarcane bio-oil and ethanol
Abstract
The emissions from maritime transport sector represents 2.2% of worldwide emissions, with a consumption of about 5 million barrels o""f oil per day. In coming years, increases around 17 Mtoe of fuel consumption (in 2035) and 336% of GHG emissions (in 2030) are expec"ted of this sector?.The transport sector has the potential to reduce the pollutants and GHG emissions by at least 40% until 2050. I"n this context, the maritime industry understands that biofuels are an important alternative to reduce the GHG emissions. However, t"he biofuels will need to achieve the performance required to be produced at competitive prices and guarantee the sustainability in w"hole production and supply chain.The marine fuel oils (HFO/IFO) are the most used, followed by marine diesel oils (MGO/MDO), estima""ted in 60% and 23% of global marine fuel consumption respectively. Nevertheless, marine fuels oils are low quality and high sulfur c""ontent. Therefore, marine diesel oils have been blended with marine fuel oils to reduce sulfur emissions to attend SOx and NOx thres""hold established by law. The most used marine fuel for military applications is the F-76, which is used by all nonnuclear Navy comba""tant ship systems, being estimated the consumption of 46 barrels per day in Naval vessels (data from U.S. Department of Defense). Th""is fuel is similar to the distillate oil for commercial use, but the most important difference between them is the storage requireme""nts, which is tighter for military application.Due to growing demand for marine fuels in next decades (F-76 and MGO mainly) and tac""kling the environmental impacts arising from the consumption of fossil fuels (ie: GHG emissions), our purpose is to use fast pyrolys"is bio-oil from sugarcane blended with marine diesel oil. Bio-oil from fast pyrolysis may offer large potential to be a sustainable" alternative to fossil fuels because of abundant raw material (mainly crop residues), the possibility of a sustainable production an""d reduced costs.The maritime transport sector has not yet implemented a GHG reduction emission global target, such as the aviation"" sector has adopted, but it is expected to be set in the maritime sector in the coming years. In this direction, the International M"aritime Organization (IMO) proposed two efficiency measures to address GHG emissions requirements: the Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI) ~ applied to new ships built after 2013 ~ and the Ship Energy Efficiency Management Plan (SEEMP) ~ considering a plan to mo"nitor and possibly improve their energy efficiency. Despite the IMO~s efforts, unlike aviation sector, the countries have not so far"" agreed on an emission limitation/reduction proposed by IMO. There are other two important local regulations from IMO, Emissions Con"trol Areas (ECA) - applied in the whole coast of USA and Canada - and the SOx Emissions Control Areas (SECAs) - applied mainly in th"e Northern Europe. Facing this context, the proposal investigations would help to reach the emissions reduction targets, once it is" foreseeable an effective implementation of these regulations in a near future.Bio-oil and diesel are slightly soluble due to physi"cal and chemical differences causing limited fuel solubility, being necessary an additional bioresource to make the full mixture pos""sible. The first investigation studies the bio-oil/diesel blend using ethanol as co-solvent, making possible an alternative biofuel" blend by improving its properties and working on the miscibility of bio-oil and diesel. The second investigation intends to study the biomass deconstruction in order to improve the fast pyrolysis process (yields) and products (advanced bio-oil).
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jul 07, 2017
- Source ID
- N629091712088
Entities
People
- Luis M Cortez
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy