Bioeconomy has gained political momentum since 2012 when the European Commission adopted the strategy “Innovating for Sustainable Growth: A Bioeconomy for Europe”. Assessing the environmental performance of different bioeconomy value chains (divided in three pillars: food and feed, bio-based products and bioenergy) is key to facilitate solid and evidence-based policy making.
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The Bioenergy Technologies Office of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy
Efficiency and Renewable Energy sponsored a scoping study to assess the potential of ethanolbased
high octane fuel (HOF) to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.
HOF blends used in an engine designed for higher octane have the potential to increase vehicle
energy efficiency through improved knock suppression. When the high-octane blend is made
with 25%–40% ethanol by volume, this energy efficiency improvement is potentially sufficient
Funded from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Bioenergy Technologies Office.
Goal: Enable long- term supply of sustainable feedstock & bioenergy – Identify key indicators of how bioenergy production affects environmental, social & economic sustainability – Determine how those effects can be quantified – Demonstrate quantitative approach to assessment of progress toward sustainability in case studies
Funded from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Bioenergy Technologies Office.
Fact Sheet for High Octane Fuels: Challenges & Opportunities
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is supporting engine and vehicle research to investigate the potential of high-octane fuels to improve fuel economy. Ethanol has very high research octane number (RON) and heat of vaporization (HoV), properties that make it an excellent spark ignition engine fuel. The prospects of increasing both the ethanol content and the octane number of the gasoline pool has the potential to enable improved fuel economy in future vehicles with downsized, downsped engines.
Presentation at 2015 Bioenergy Technologies Office Peer Review March 23, 2015
Presentation at Auto/Ag/Ethanol Meeting USCAR August 18, 2015
Share and discuss provisional findings from coordinated DOE national laboratory studies on the opportunities and challenges associated with the deployment of high octane, mid-level ethanol blend transportation fuels.
Presentation to Hudson Institute Fueling American Growth Washington, DC May 7, 2015
Presentation at National Ethanol Conference Grapevine, TX February 20, 2015
INTRODUCTION The U.S. Congress passed the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) seven years ago. Since then, biofuels have gone from darling to scapegoat for many environmentalists, policy makers, and the general public. The reasons for this shift are complex and include concerns about environmental degradation, uncertainties about impact on food security, new access to fossil fuels, and overly optimistic timetables. As a result, many people have written off biofuels.
Funded from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Bioenergy Technologies Office.
This project looks at the potential of blending ethanol with natural gasoline to produce Flex-Fuels (ASTM D5798-13a) and high-octane, mid-level ethanol blends. Eight natural gasoline samples were collected from pipeline companies or ethanol producers around the United States.
Funded from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Bioenergy Technologies Office.
The objective of this work was to measure knock resistance metrics for ethanol-hydrocarbon blends with a primary focus on development of methods to measure the heat of vaporization (HOV). Blends of ethanol at 10 to 50 volume percent were prepared with three gasoline blendstocks and a natural gasoline.
Funded from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Bioenergy Technologies Office.
High-octane fuels (HOFs) such as mid-level ethanol blends can be leveraged to design vehicles with increased engine efficiency, but producing these fuels at refineries may be subject to energy efficiency penalties. It has been questioned whether, on a well-to-wheels (WTW) basis, the use of HOFs in the vehicles designed for HOF has net greenhouse gas (GHG) emission benefits.
Funded from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Bioenergy Technologies Office.
This report evaluates infrastructure implications for a high-octane fuel, i.e., a blend of 25% denatured ethanol and 75% gasoline (E25) or higher (E25+), for use with a new high-efficiency type of vehicle. E25+ is under consideration due to federal regulations requiring the use of more renewable fuels and improvements in fuel economy. The existing transportation fuel infrastructure may not be completely compatible with a mid-level ethanol blend (blends above E15 up to E50).
The compatibility of plastic materials used in fuel storage and dispensing applications was determined for an off-highway diesel fuel
and a blend containing 20% bio-oil (Bio20) derived from a fast pyrolysis process. Bio20 is not to be confused with B20, which is a
diesel blend containing 20% biodiesel. The feedstock, processing, and chemistry of biodiesel are markedly different from bio-oil.
Plastic materials included those identified for use as seals, coatings, piping and fiberglass resins, but many are also used in vehicle
Funded from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Bioenergy Technologies Office.
The compatibility of plastic materials used in fuel storage and dispensing applications was determined for a test fuel representing
gasoline blended with 10% ethanol. Prior investigations were performed on gasoline fuels containing 25, 50 and 85% ethanol, but the
knowledge gap existing from 0 to 25% ethanol precluded accurate compatibility assessment of low level blends, especially for the
current E10 fuel (gasoline containing 10% ethanol) used in most filling stations, and the recently accepted E15 fuel blend (gasoline
blended with up to15% ethanol).
Funded from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Bioenergy Technologies Office.
The compatibility of elastomer materials used in fuel storage and dispensing applications was determined for an off-highway diesel
fuel and a blend containing 20% bio-oil (Bio20) derived from a fast pyrolysis process. (This fuel blend is not to be confused with B20,
which is a blend of diesel fuel with 20% biodiesel.) The elastomer types evaluated in this study included fluorocarbon, fluorosilicone,
acrylonitrile rubber (NBR), styrene butadiene rubber (SBR), polyurethane, neoprene, and silicone. All of these elastomer types are
Funded from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Bioenergy Technologies Office.
Understanding the environmental effects of alternative fuel production is critical to characterizing the sustainability of energy resources to inform policy and regulatory decisions. The magnitudes of these environmental effects vary according to the intensity and scale of fuel production along each step of the supply chain. We compare the spatial extent and temporal duration of ethanol and gasoline production processes and environmental effects based on a literature review and then synthesize the scale differences on space-time diagrams.
Organization:
DOE
Funded from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Bioenergy Technologies Office.
This paper presents a generic approach for selecting sustainability criteria and indicators (C&I) by using a participatory methodology. Selecting appropriate C&I to assess the sustainability of projects or developments is crucial and significantly influences the assessment results. The methodology, which consists of two processes: a pre-selection of suitable C&I by the researchers and a final selection by regional bioenergy experts in a multi-stakeholder forum, was applied in a Scottish region (Tayside & Fife).