Biofuels on the road As the consumption of fossil fuels for road transport steadily increases, the need to cut down carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the long term is becoming more pressing. There is therefore an urgent demand to develop not only alternative, but also additional fuels. Energy © Shutterstock Biofuels are beginning to be increasingly used, notably for transport where the European Commission has set an ambitious target of 10% share in overall petrol and diesel consumption by 2020. Specifically, bioethanol, offering a clear advantage in terms of security of supply, has been the focus of many research initiatives aiming to overcome current technical barriers to their wider use. The AFFORHD project, under the coordination of the VOLVO Powertrain Corporation, carried out a 'Well-to-Wheels' analysis to estimate pollutant emissions, energy efficiency and industrial costs of all significant alternative fuels. This allowed project partners from automotive and biofuels industries to suggest improvements in dimethyl ether (DME) fuels, which were incorporated in the design of a new generation of heavy-duty vehicles. DME is a multi-source fuel that can be produced not only from fossil resources such as coal, petroleum and natural gas, but also from synthetic gas generated by the gasification of biomass. As a chemical, it is non-toxic and benign to the environment, and as a diesel fuel it was proven to offer the desired potential for ultra-low exhaust emissions due to its soot-free combustion. An additional aim of the life cycle assessment was to compare different production routes of renewable fuels from an environmental point of view. The estimated contributions of emissions from production, distribution and final use of each fuel have demonstrated the superiority of DME over methanol (MeOH) and Fischer-Tropsch diesel.
