Future Fuel Field Trial

Real world sustainability

As a company, we’re very conscious of the global challenge to decelerate and eventually stop climate warming effects driven by GHG emissions. Every lever to achieve that goal needs to be identified and used as soon as possible in order to make a real impact in the shortest possible time.

Even though they’re not in the focus of public media and political statements, sustainable liquid fuels for combustion engines offer an enormous opportunity to keep the existing fleet in motion in an environmentally friendly manner, while still using existing infrastructure.

Consequently, there may be no need to invest in time-consuming construction of new or additional infrastructures once such fuels become available in larger quantities – it enables both fuel suppliers and drivers all over the world to contribute to short-term climate-warming deceleration.

COR Bio-G EN228 E

In order to demonstrate this is not a scenario so far into the future, but actually feasible to realise now using existing technology and to motivate the industry to intensify their efforts to increase availability of sustainable fuels, we have started an internal field trial with real Coryton people and their cars.

The fuel

The fuel used was intended to represent a realistic option of the present, not an artificial small niche product which can be produced in small sample quantities only. For that reason, a blend was created containing Ethanol, ETBE and an exceptional high amount of bio-gasoline, all of which combined resulting in >50% v/v of bio-content.

Ethanol is added to gasoline fuel in some European countries already including the UK, and will be increased from up to 5% (E5) to up to 10% (E10) in the UK in 2021. The major difference of COR Bio-G EN228 E5 compared to current pump fuel is the EtG (Ethanol to Gasoline) component. This is produced in an environmental-friendly process using non-edible waste as raw material, and a significant proportion of sustainable energy for its conversion to a gasoline fuel. Considering all effects in this process, the accumulated GHG savings of our new fuel is 48.8% compared to conventional fossil fuel.

Key observations

28 performance reports were registered regarding observations during the field trial. 20 of those were considered fuel related, 6 were other issues e.g. a defective alternator or regular service/maintenance work, indicated by a service light on the dashboard.

In two cases, a short hesitation in the starting process was reported where any impact of the fuel could not be excluded. The majority of reports were about performance which was perceived to be better than with the conventional fuels previously used. In two cases fuel consumption savings were also observed (by 5% or 1 mpg increase), however most vehicles remained at the same fuel consumption levels as before.

Summary & Conclusion

The fuel developed by the team at Coryton has shown how much GHG emission reduction is possible compared to a traditional fossil fuel, just by using existing production streams and smart blending capabilities. Obviously, the overall production resources don´t currently allow a 100% coverage of the UK gasoline fuel demand, but the field trial demonstrates that there is no need for concerns and suspicions against new biofuels, which are produced by using waste raw materials.

The overall distance of almost 20,000 miles of the field trial has taken place emitting only half as much GHG-relevant CO₂ into the environment than with conventional fossil fuel.

It was shown that there was no evidence for unusual changes in performance or reliability of the COR Bio-G EN228 E5, which is a positive and encouraging starting point for future experiments, utilising fuels with biogenic raw material up to 100%.

The field trial was intended to be a qualitative on-road test of an available future fuel in existing average vehicles. The fact that neither negative tendencies in any direction nor major individual issues occurred shows that this combination has passed the test for road-capability right from today! It’s an encouraging result that can support getting more understanding and acceptance of GHG reduced or even GHG neutral fuels in the future.