PNNL

More efficient engines enabled by better fuels could increase the fuel economy of light duty (LD) vehicles by 10 percent beyond current technology and planned developments. This report identifies top blendstocks that can be derived from biomass and are suitable for further development and commercialization. These blendstocks are best-suited for LD gasoline, boosted spark ignition (BSI) engines. The blendstocks were identified using a fuel property basis using the BSI merit function. The merit function determines potential improvements in engine efficiency, was used to evaluate the performance of candidate bioblendstocks in blends up to 30%. Those that exceeded the efficiency of an E10 premium were included in this list. This report is aimed at biofuel researchers looking to better understand the efficiency implications of biofuels under development, as well as engine researchers who are interested in future biofuels with properties that enable more efficient engine design and operation.

The Co-Optimization of Fuels & Engines (Co-Optima) team includes experts from nine national laboratories: Argonne, Idaho, Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Pacific Northwest, and Sandia National Laboratories and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The team’s expertise includes biofuel development, fuel property testing and characterization, combustion fundamentals, modeling and simulation from atomic scale to engine scale, and analysis.