Title : Renewables fuels, the need for of provenance and quality to power adoption
Abstract:
As demonstrated with Dieselgate, trust built over decades can be lost in a moment. As we
enter an exciting new era of renewable fuels, they must be clean in all respects to build win the faith of the next generation.
In is reasonable to estimate that greater variety of fuels multiplies the risk that exists for issues concerning quality, fraud and confusion through the supply chain, not least with the consumer at the pump. All stakeholders must be vigilant and take every reasonable measure to avoid stories regarding contamination, feedstock provenance and authenticity.
Some may confidently suggest that safeguards already exist and that the market can easily evolve and migrate to handle renewable fuels. Our presentation will demonstrate, using the example of diesel, the industries most established fuel - quality is not as consistent as we should expect. We will identify the differences between diesel samples independently sourced and tested by Emissions Analytics in our laboratory and also demonstrate the real world emissions impact on the road.
Emissions Analytics took four different diesels on sale in different parts of the United Kingdom and subjected them to two-dimensional gas chromatography and time-of-flight mass spectrometry - using equipment from Markes International and SepSolve Analytical - in order to separate, identify and quantify organic compounds present. On average, 1,015 different organic compounds were identified across the four different diesel fuels.
Emissions Analytics will present the variance of certain key compound groups including aromatics, aliphatics and non-hydrocarbons including carbonyls. The latter includes air pollutants with human health effects such as formaldehyde and acetaldehyde.
Within the pollutant groups, it is then possible to show the most prevalent individual compounds. For example, the most prominent aromatics including variations of Benzene and Naphthalene.
Having studied the fuel that goes into the engine, the next stage is to use similar techniques to analyse what comes out of the tailpipe after combustion. As with fuels, we are looking for organic compounds, although post-combustion they will be characterised by volatile and semi-volatile compounds in the gas phase due to the temperature. To illustrate this, one newer and one older diesel vehicle were tested by Emissions Analytics for their cold start emissions for two minutes from key-on. Complementing the standard gas Portable Emissions Measurement System (PEMS) was our proprietary system for diluting the exhaust and capturing samples onto desorption tubes. The samples were then subject to the same two-dimensional chromatography as for the fuels. Our presentation will share those results and also reference results from our wider independent test program, EOUA.
While the challenge withe-fuels is to have access to sufficient low-carbon electricity to create the fuels, with biofuels it is the origin and content of the biocomponents. Their provenance is important to verify that they do contribute to real-world CO2 reductions and, with the pressure to decarbonise, there is a growing risk of exploiting the current rules or even fraud in blending illegitimate or dangerous biocomponents into market fuel. The techniques we will present allow detailed analysis of what goes into the fuels, and the emissions created when the fuels are used.
