Rapid Transition to Sustainable Urban Transport

World Premiere for Scania's First Ethanol-Powered Trucks

After nearly 20 years as a supplier of ethanol buses, Scania (STO:SCVA)(STO:SCVB) is now broadening its range of ethanol-powered vehicles for urban traffic. Today the company’s first ethanol trucks are being unveiled to international trade journalists, who are test-driving the trucks in Södertälje. Starting next year, this will enable hauliers, authorities and municipalities to run both passenger and goods transport on the same renewable fuel.

Scania is working together with other interested parties in establishing an infrastructure for ethanol fuel distribution. Once the fuel infrastructure is in place, it will also be possible for smaller transport companies to invest in ethanol-powered vehicles.

Scania regards ethanol as the most cost-efficient renewable fuel currently available for urban operation, since it can contribute immediately to reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Scania has produced ethanol bus engines for close to 20 years. The technology is mature and viable for intense everyday city service.

Ethanol is as easy to handle as other liquid fuels. By its nature, it provides cleaner combustion, which means that not only carbon dioxide but other emissions are lower.

If ethanol is produced from Brazilian sugar cane, it provides up to 90 per cent lower carbon dioxide emissions than diesel fuel. Trial production from forest waste with integrated bioprocesses extracting heat or electric power indicates similarly high results.

Production of ethanol as an alternative to petrol is sharply increasing worldwide. The production infrastructure is thus already in place.

Ethanol engine with diesel combustion

Scania's ethanol engines work according to the diesel principle (compression-ignition) and the efficiency of this third generation is up to diesel engine standards. The ethanol used for diesel combustion contains 5-7 per cent additives that improve ignition and lubrication. Passenger cars running on ethanol or an ethanol/petrol mix have Otto engines with considerably lower efficiency.

Scania is the only manufacturer to master this diesel-ethanol technology.

The new ethanol engine is an adaptation of Scania's 9-litre diesel engine with charge-cooling and exhaust gas recirculation (EGR). The engine easily meets the enhanced environmentally friendly vehicle (EEV) standard, which is slightly stricter than Euro 5 − the exhaust standard being introduced in the European Union in October 2009.

Performance is generous for a 9-litre engine. Power is 270 hp and torque a full 1200 Nm, resulting in excellent response and driveability.

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/scania-world-premiere-for-scanias,351575.shtml

EROEI is only one consideration and may not be the most important one in energy policy. Energy independence (reducing international competition for limited natural resources), freedom from pollution (including carbon dioxide and other green house gases), and affordability could be more important, particularly when considering secondary energy sources. While a nation's primary energy source is not sustainable unless it uses less energy than it creates, the same is not true for secondary energy supplies. Some of the energy surplus from the primary energy source can be used to create the fuel for secondary energy sources, such as for transportation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EROEI

Thermodynamics is the study of the inter-relation between heat, work and internal energy of a system.

The British scientist and author C.P. Snow had an excellent way of remembering the three laws:

You cannot win (that is, you cannot get something for nothing, because matter and energy are conserved).

You cannot break even (you cannot return to the same energy state, because there is always an increase in disorder; entropy always increases).

You cannot get out of the game (because absolute zero is unattainable).

http://www.physlink.com/Education/AskExperts/ae280.cfm