Journal of Fundamentals of Renewable Energy and Applications
Open Access

Tailor-made fuels from biomass: The fuel design process on the example of 1-octanol

World Bioenergy Congress and Expo

June 13-14, 2016 Rome, Italy

Marius Zubel, Benedikt Heuser and Stefan Pischinger

RWTH Aachen University, Germany

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Fundam Renewable Energy Appl

Abstract :

Alternative fuels have become great importance for sustainable individual transportation since the emissions of greenhouse gases from the transport sector represent a great threat for the environment. Furthermore, the harmful emissions from combustion engines, like soot and nitrous oxides (NOX), are strongly regulated. Therefore, the Cluster of Excellence â�?�?Tailorâ�?�?made Fuels from Biomassâ�? (TMFB) was established at RWTH Aachen University. The goal of TMFB is to establish the fuel design process for modern combustion development of engines. The establishment of this fuel design process is a loop, beginning with the development of different methods to identify promising fuel candidates, derived from lignocellulosic biomass. Afterwards the production pathways of these fuel candidates are developed and their efficiency is assessed. To close the loop, the most promising fuel candidates are passed to intensive fuel screening and investigations in combustion engines and the results are fed back into the model development. In this paper, the fuel design process is explained by taking the example of 1â�?�?octanol, which is a promising fuel candidate for compression ignition (CI) engines. The starting point of the synthesis of 1â�?�?octanol are platform chemicals, namely furfural and acetone, which can be obtained using Dâ�?�?xylose, obtained from lignocellulosic biomass, together with sulfiric acid. 1â�?�?Octanol is then derived from these platform chemicals using a bifunctional catalyst, developed within the TMFB, with yields of 60%. Due to this promising production route, 1â�?�?octanol is investigated in a CI engine. The engine results proved a very drastical reduction of engineâ�?�?out soot and NOX emissions when compared to conventional EN590 Diesel fuel.