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Alternative Fuels for Transport: Recent Advances and Future Challenges
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Alternative Fuels for Transport: Recent Advances and Future Challenges

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Transportation and Future Mobility".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 August 2023) | Viewed by 19107

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Matteo Prussi

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Agrifood Production and Environmental Sciences, European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC)Directorate C - Energy, Transport and ClimateEnergy Efficiency and Renewables - Unit C.2JRC-ISPRAVia E. Fermi 2749, TP 023 I- 27027 Ispra (VA), ItalyUniversity of Florence, Florence, Italy
Interests: energy conversion technologies; system analysis (climate change); net energy efficiency of bioenergy systems; life cycle assessment; bioenergy and biofuels; assessment of sustainability; socio-economic impacts of energy systems; transport policies
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Marco Buffi

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Via E. Fermi 2749, 21027 Ispra, Italy
Interests: biofuels and bioenergy; life cycle assessment; GHGs emissions; assessment of sustainability; thermochemical and biological processes; modelling energy system; EU energy policies
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are glad to invite you to contribute to the Special Issue on “Alternative Fuels for Transport: The Sustainability Challenge”. Today, alternative fuels are contributing to mitigating the environmental impact of large shares of transport. In particular, the road sector utilizes a significant amount of biofuels, as a means to reduce its environmental impact. They are mostly produced from bio-derived materials, and the availability of sustainable feedstock is one of the major concerns for their use.

In the coming decades, road vehicles are expected to progressively shift towards power-train technologies other than combustion engines, such as electrical engines and fuel cells, while other transport segments are instead expected to keep relying on the liquid fuels. In particular, aviation, road freight, and maritime are usually considered as more rigid, with respect to disruptive technological changes, mainly due to the required energy density of the services they provide.

As liquid fuels will supply these sectors in the short-to-medium term, feedstocks will have to respect a rigid sustainability framework, to really contribute in the mitigation of the sectors environmental impact. The concept of sustainability encompasses aspects related to greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation potential, indirect land‐use change (ILUC), biodiversity preservation, carbon stock depletion, competition with food and feed markets, and so on. Advanced feedstock is considered a means to reduce direct and induced negative effects; they can be obtained from non‐food crops, industrial organic wastes, agricultural and forest residues are considered, as well as double cropping, marginal land productions, conversion process improvements, and so on. Alternative fuels produced for waste sources of carbon (e.g. CO2) are another interesting possibility.

This Special Issue aims to address the challenge of producing and use alternative fuels from sustainable feedstock. How the potential supply of biomass derived feedstock could be affected by stricter sustainability criteria is the research question this Special Issue aims to answer. Other relevant aspects are related to the current policy framework, and how this could be improved. The Special Issue offers room for discussing all these topics, and it welcomes contributions from researchers, scholars, industries and any relevant stakeholders that are willing to contribute to decarbonise the transport sector.

Dr. Matteo Prussi
Dr. Marco Buffi
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • biofuels
  • alternative fuels
  • advanced biofuels
  • feedstock
  • GHG saving
  • transport
  • aviation
  • maritime
  • sustainability
  • ILUC
  • GWP
  • RCF
  • RFNBO
  • power-to-X

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Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 3041 KiB  
Article
An Evaluation of the Effect of Fuel Injection on the Performance and Emission Characteristics of a Diesel Engine Fueled with Plastic-Oil–Hydrogen–Diesel Blends
by Kodandapuram Jayasimha Reddy, Gaddale Amba Prasad Rao, Reddygari Meenakshi Reddy and Upendra Rajak
Appl. Sci. 2024, 14(15), 6539; https://doi.org/10.3390/app14156539 - 26 Jul 2024
Viewed by 826
Abstract
Fuelled engines serve as prime movers in low-, medium-, and heavy-duty applications with high thermal diesel efficiency and good fuel economy compared to their counterpart, spark ignition engines. In recent years, diesel engines have undergone a multitude of developments, however, diesel engines release [...] Read more.
Fuelled engines serve as prime movers in low-, medium-, and heavy-duty applications with high thermal diesel efficiency and good fuel economy compared to their counterpart, spark ignition engines. In recent years, diesel engines have undergone a multitude of developments, however, diesel engines release high levels of NOx, smoke, carbon monoxide [CO], and hydrocarbon [HC] emissions. Due to the exponential growth in fleet population, there is a severe burden caused by petroleum-derived fuels. To tackle both fuel and pollution issues, the research community has developed strategies to use economically viable alternative fuels. The present experimental investigations deal with the use of blends of biodiesel prepared from waste plastic oil [P] and petro-diesel [D], and, to improve its performance, hydrogen [H] is added in small amounts. Further, advanced injection timings have been adopted [17.5° to 25.5° b TDC (before top dead centre)] to study their effect on harmful emissions. Hydrogen energy shares vary from 5 to 15%, maintaining a biodiesel proportion of 20%, and the remaining is petro-diesel. Thus, the adopted blends are DP20 ((diesel fuel (80%) and waste plastic biofuel (20%)), DP20H5 (DP20 (95%) and hydrogen (5%)), DP20H10 (DP20 (90%) and hydrogen (10%)), and DP20H15 (DP20 (85%) and hydrogen (15%)). The experiments were conducted at constant speeds with a rated injection pressure of 220 bar and a rated compression ratio of 18. The increase in the share of hydrogen led to a considerable improvement in the performance. Under full load conditions, with advanced injection timings, the brake-specific fuel consumption had significantly decreased and NOx emissions increased. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Alternative Fuels for Transport: Recent Advances and Future Challenges)
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16 pages, 8806 KiB  
Article
A Synergic Application of High-Oxygenated E-Fuels and New Bowl Designs for Low Soot Emissions: An Optical Analysis
by José V. Pastor, Carlos Micó, Felipe Lewiski, Francisco J. Tejada and Cinzia Tornatore
Appl. Sci. 2023, 13(14), 8560; https://doi.org/10.3390/app13148560 - 24 Jul 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1341
Abstract
Synthetic fuels significantly reduce pollutant emissions and the carbon footprint of ICE applications. Among these fuels, oxymethylene dimethyl ethers (OMEX) are an excellent candidate to entirely or partially replace conventional fuels in compression ignition (CI) engines due to their attractive properties. [...] Read more.
Synthetic fuels significantly reduce pollutant emissions and the carbon footprint of ICE applications. Among these fuels, oxymethylene dimethyl ethers (OMEX) are an excellent candidate to entirely or partially replace conventional fuels in compression ignition (CI) engines due to their attractive properties. The very low soot particle formation tendency allows the decoupling of the soot-NOX trade-off in CI engines. In addition, innovative piston geometries have the potential to reduce soot formation inside the cylinder in the late combustion stage. This work aims to analyze the potential of combining OMEX with an innovative piston geometry to reduce soot formation inside the cylinder. In this way, several blends of OMEX-Diesel were tested using a radial-lips bowl geometry and a conventional reentrant bowl. Tests were conducted in an optically accessible engine under simulated EGR conditions, reducing the in-cylinder oxygen content. For this purpose, 2-colour pyrometry and high-speed excited state hydroxyl chemiluminescence techniques were applied to trace the in-cylinder soot formation and oxidation processes. The results confirm that increasing OMEX in Diesel improves the in-cylinder soot reduction under low oxygen conditions for both piston geometries. Moreover, using radial lips bowl geometry significantly improves the soot reduction, from 17% using neat Diesel to 70% less at the highest OMEX quantity studied in this paper. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Alternative Fuels for Transport: Recent Advances and Future Challenges)
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20 pages, 6864 KiB  
Article
Challenges and Recommendations for Improved Identification of Low ILUC-Risk Agricultural Biomass
by Cato Sandford, Chris Malins and Calliope Panoutsou
Appl. Sci. 2023, 13(10), 6349; https://doi.org/10.3390/app13106349 - 22 May 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1593
Abstract
The “low indirect land use change risk” (“low ILUC-risk”) concept was developed to assess whether crop-based biofuels would compete with other land uses and cause the expansion of agricultural land. At the core of low ILUC-risk is an “additionality principle”, which requires that [...] Read more.
The “low indirect land use change risk” (“low ILUC-risk”) concept was developed to assess whether crop-based biofuels would compete with other land uses and cause the expansion of agricultural land. At the core of low ILUC-risk is an “additionality principle”, which requires that biofuel feedstock receive special treatment only if it is produced over and above the business-as-usual baseline. This paper examines and tests the European Commission’s methodology for calculating the baseline for yield improvement projects, by applying it to publicly available Eurostat data at national and NUTS2 scales. We assess from a statistical perspective how variation in regional yield trends would lead to differences in the long-term outcomes of low ILUC-risk certification; we conclude that, as currently designed, the methodology would over-state the amount of additional production in some cases and could hence incentivise the diversion of crops from other uses into the biofuel sector. We introduce the terms “tailwind additionality”, “headwind additionality”, and “additionality ratchet” to characterise the phenomena which contribute to this outcome. Our results lead us to recommendations which may enhance both the attractiveness and the robustness of the low ILUC-risk system. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Alternative Fuels for Transport: Recent Advances and Future Challenges)
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21 pages, 2368 KiB  
Article
Opportunities for Low Indirect Land Use Biomass for Biofuels in Europe
by Calliope Panoutsou, Sara Giarola, Dauda Ibrahim, Simone Verzandvoort, Berien Elbersen, Cato Sandford, Chris Malins, Maria Politi, George Vourliotakis, Vigh Enikő Zita, Viktória Vásáry, Efthymia Alexopoulou, Andrea Salimbeni and David Chiaramonti
Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(9), 4623; https://doi.org/10.3390/app12094623 - 4 May 2022
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 3267
Abstract
Sustainable biofuels are an important tool for the decarbonisation of transport. This is especially true in aviation, maritime, and heavy-duty sectors with limited short-term alternatives. Their use by conventional transport fleets requires few changes to the existing infrastructure and engines, and thus their [...] Read more.
Sustainable biofuels are an important tool for the decarbonisation of transport. This is especially true in aviation, maritime, and heavy-duty sectors with limited short-term alternatives. Their use by conventional transport fleets requires few changes to the existing infrastructure and engines, and thus their integration can be smooth and relatively rapid. Provision of feedstock should comply with sustainability principles for (i) producing additional biomass without distorting food and feed markets and (ii) addressing challenges for ecosystem services, including biodiversity, and soil quality. This paper performs a meta-analysis of current research for low indirect land use change (ILUC) risk biomass crops for sustainable biofuels that benefited either from improved agricultural practices or from cultivation in unused, abandoned, or severely degraded land. Two categories of biomass crops are considered here: oil and lignocellulosic. The findings confirm that there are significant opportunities to cultivate these crops in European agro-ecological zones with sustainable agronomic practices both in farming land and in land with natural constraints (unused, abandoned, and degraded land). These could produce additional low environmental impact feedstocks for biofuels and deliver economic benefits to farmers. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Alternative Fuels for Transport: Recent Advances and Future Challenges)
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13 pages, 1183 KiB  
Article
Comprehensive LCA of Biobased Sustainable Aviation Fuels and JET A-1 Multiblend
by Katja Oehmichen, Stefan Majer, Franziska Müller-Langer and Daniela Thrän
Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(7), 3372; https://doi.org/10.3390/app12073372 - 25 Mar 2022
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 6638
Abstract
The use of sustainable biofuels in the aviation sector with correspondingly high reduction in specific GHG emissions will make an important contribution to reducing GHG emissions from air traffic. It is expected that airports in Europe will be supplied with JET A-1 blends [...] Read more.
The use of sustainable biofuels in the aviation sector with correspondingly high reduction in specific GHG emissions will make an important contribution to reducing GHG emissions from air traffic. It is expected that airports in Europe will be supplied with JET A-1 blends that also contain various types of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) in variable proportions (“multiblend”). This article presents the results of a study assessing the environmental impact of various sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) and multiblends, including all relevant parts of their value chains, starting from SAF production to mixing of different SAF with conventional JET A-1 and finally the use of the produced multiblend. The results of the life cycle assessment indicated that the production of some SAF caused less GHG emissions than others due to the use of waste or residues as SAF feedstock or the use of by-products to meet the internal process energy demand. A detailed assessment of GHG emissions of the studied multiblend JET A-1 showed a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of up to 35% compared to fossil JET A-1. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Alternative Fuels for Transport: Recent Advances and Future Challenges)
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12 pages, 511 KiB  
Article
Assessment of the Feedstock Availability for Covering EU Alternative Fuels Demand
by Matteo Prussi, Calliope Panoutsou and David Chiaramonti
Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(2), 740; https://doi.org/10.3390/app12020740 - 12 Jan 2022
Cited by 14 | Viewed by 3996
Abstract
Modern economies rely on the efficiency of their transportation sector; however, the environmental impact of the sector remains a growing concern. Among the various proposed solutions, the production and deployment of alternative fuels is a major option. However, concerns exist that the actual [...] Read more.
Modern economies rely on the efficiency of their transportation sector; however, the environmental impact of the sector remains a growing concern. Among the various proposed solutions, the production and deployment of alternative fuels is a major option. However, concerns exist that the actual availability of sustainable feedstock might lower the current level of ambition. This paper addresses this issue by reviewing recent studies and policy targets, to match forecasts for expected demand and feedstock availability for road, aviation, and maritime sectors in the EU in 2030. The existing literature is fragmented and based on a variety of different approaches, and a consistent assessment of the potential overall demand for transport is still missing. In spite of the challenges posed by the numerous uncertainties, this research provides an estimate of potential European demand for alternative fuels that ranges between 20 and 33 Mtoe. We aimed to answer the question about the availability of sustainable feedstock to cover this potential demand. The analysis confirmed, even under very conservative assumptions, that feedstock may not be the major barrier today. Other issues, such as the feedstock costs, the price volatilities, the existing logistical infrastructures, etc., are relevant aspects contributing to the puzzle. Whilst feedstock is present across European regions, a critical element which requires detailed analysis at the implementation value chain level is the effectiveness of its sustainable mobilisation alongside the synergies and trade-offs that may arise. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Alternative Fuels for Transport: Recent Advances and Future Challenges)
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