OXY-GEN 2 - Sustainable oxygen containing Diesel substitutes for improvement of efficiency and emission decrease

The need for motorized use of oxygenated second-generation biofuels in diesel engines is on the rise. At the project, Oxy-Gen2 the selection of the fuels won’t be limited by the today’s standard for diesel fuels EN590, but the entire technical potential of new fuels will be considered. The focus of the project are experimental studies of the use of biofuels in combustion engines. Therefore, investigation on the endothermic dissociation of fuel through the exhaust heat and the use of fuels as a NOx reducing agent in the exhaust aftertreatment is carried out in addition to the actual combustion. Next to the low-soot combustion, oxygen-containing fuels have the advantage that a pre-splitting or reforming of the fuel in the range of typical exhaust gas temperatures is possible. The achievable contribution to increasing efficiency by exhaust gas heat recovery will be investigated in the project. In addition, the determination to what extent the NOx reduction in SCR process can be operated with the help of oxygen-containing fuel instead of urea. The replacement of the otherwise necessary second operating substance would lead to a considerable simplification of the system. The study of the combustion properties requires in addition to the direct injection, the injection of gases (products of fission fuel, DME). The objective of the studies on the consumption side are the investigation on the interaction of the methods of fuel delivery, as well as the coordinated operation with the upstream and downstream processes to stationary operating points. On the side of the production, sustainability and profitability of second-generation biogenic fuels are not always compatible. For an overall assessment of the project Oxy-Gen2 and after a thorough literature search a database second-generation biofuels gets created. Thus, the tested fuels in the internal combustion engines from butanol to oxymethylen ether (OME) will be assessed for their expected sustainability and profitability of production. The results are finally combined into an assessment of the fuels considered in terms of efficiency and system complexity in the system boundaries of the vehicle. Together with the study of the upstream synthetic routes from biomass, a first overall view of the potential of various renewable oxygenated diesel fuels is given.