Nov 23 2009
The publication titled, ‘Alternative fuels with heavy-duty engines and vehicles’ by Timo Murtonen and Päivi Aakko-Saksa is a report, which documents the combination of results from three projects conducted by the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. The results discuss the data collected on emissions and the performance of heavy-duty engines and vehicles, which use hydrotreated vegetable oil, GTL diesel, CNG, ester-type biodiesel, and fossil diesel fuel.
Three engines and five city buses were used for observation to collect the data needed for the study. The study performed a long term test with diesel oxidation catalyst using EN590 and RME fuels, and also compared the efficiency of diesel oxidation catalyst with that of particle oxidation catalyst (POC), which was measured using the two engines.
The study carried out exhaust gas emission measurements in detail for a fixed measurement period. In addition to this, regulated emissions (HC, CO, NO, PM), along with the number of unregulated emission compounds were analyzed. Aldehydes, carbon dioxide, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, mutagenicity of particles and particle size distribution and total number, and many gaseous compounds with FTIR were also analyzed in the study.
The results obtained from the study showed that regulated emissions can decrease with the use of HVO, GTL and RME fuels. The study also showed that if these alternative fuels are used instead of traditional EN590 diesel fuel, emissions will further decrease. These emissions are considered to be harmful to human health. A paper comprising all the results from the study was also presented.