sun­li­quid® 20: Fleet test with Mer­cedes-Benz vehicles proves fuel quality

Clari­ant, a lead­ing glob­al spe­cialty chem­ic­als com­pany (and IBB net­work mem­ber), togeth­er with Mer­cedes-Benz and Hal­ter­mann Car­less, a well-estab­lished HCS Group brand, tested the use of sus­tain­able cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol from agri­cul­tur­al residues in a fleet test with Mer­cedes-Benz series vehicles over a peri­od of 12 months for the first time in Ger­many. sun­li­quid® 20 was used for the test – a fuel pro­duced by Hal­ter­mann Car­less with a cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol con­tent of 20 per­cent by volume (E20) from Clari­ant’s sun­li­quid plant in Straub­ing. The cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol allows green­house gas emis­sion sav­ings of up to 95% across the entire value chain without com­pet­ing with food pro­duc­tion or tying up agri­cul­tur­al land. In the fleet test with Mer­cedes-Benz vehicles, sun­li­quid 20 exhib­ited very good com­bus­tion prop­er­ties with a high degree of effi­ciency and identic­al con­sump­tion com­pared to today’s stand­ard E10 fuel. Due to the slightly lower energy dens­ity of E20 com­pared to E10, slightly high­er fuel con­sump­tion was expec­ted under the same oper­at­ing con­di­tions. The tests per­formed under labor­at­ory con­di­tions demon­strated vari­ab­il­ity in the con­sump­tion ana­lys­is in which addi­tion­al con­sump­tion between 0 and 3 per­cent was observed. ​“Devel­op­ing and bring­ing solu­tions to the mar­ket for more sus­tain­able mobil­ity is one of the most import­ant tasks in the trans­port­a­tion sec­tor today. We are very pleased that sun­li­quid 20 has proven its high qual­ity in the field test – with the same range and the same driv­ing com­fort,” says Dr. Mar­tin Vollmer, Chief Tech­no­logy Officer, Clari­ant. ​“Cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol from agri­cul­tur­al residues is a car­bon-neut­ral fuel with great poten­tial, which can be cost-effect­ively pro­duced and used today. So that energy trans­ition can suc­ceed in the trans­port­a­tion sec­tor, we urgently need stable frame­work con­di­tions, such as the man­dat­ory blend­ing rate for advanced bio­fuels with­in the EU mem­ber states.” ​“This is yet more evid­ence that Ger­many is a tech­no­logy pion­eer in the research and devel­op­ment of sus­tain­able spe­cial fuels. As a spe­cialty com­pany and industry research part­ner, we are delighted to be able to pro­duce a fuel with out­stand­ing spe­cific­a­tions and envir­on­ment­al prop­er­ties that can demon­strate its use­ful­ness in exist­ing engines with exist­ing infra­struc­ture without any issues,” emphas­izes Dr. Bruno Phil­ip­pon, Seni­or Vice Pres­id­ent Per­form­ance Fuels at Hal­ter­mann Car­less. In addi­tion to the proven per­form­ance, an improve­ment in particle count emis­sions by around 50 per­cent was meas­ured for sun­li­quid 20 versus the EU ref­er­ence fuel Euro 5. The tests have con­firmed the pos­it­ive prop­er­ties of the sun­li­quid 20 fuel. The 20 per­cent cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol by volume has anoth­er decis­ive advant­age. In addi­tion to the high­er CO₂ sav­ings and reduced emis­sions, it gives the fuel a sig­ni­fic­antly high­er octane num­ber (RON) of over 100. With a wide­spread intro­duc­tion of E20, engines could be adap­ted in the future so that the qual­ity advant­age of the fuel could be used to improve engine effi­ciency and thus fur­ther reduce fuel con­sump­tion and CO₂ emis­sions. The cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol por­tion comes from Clari­ant’s sun­li­quid pre­com­mer­cial plant in Straub­ing, where approx­im­ately 4,500 tons of agri­cul­tur­al residues such as cer­eal straw or corn stover are con­ver­ted into cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol each year. At the Hal­ter­mann Car­less pro­duc­tion site in Ham­burg, the bioeth­an­ol is mixed with selec­ted com­pon­ents to form the innov­at­ive fuel whose spe­cific­a­tions rep­res­ent the poten­tial for the qual­ity of E20 fuel in Europe. Source: Clari­ant SE