Project Name
CLEO - a carbon-neutral fuel for the maritime sector
Responsible:
Associated Professor Anders Ivarsson
PhD student Motoki Terauchi (mtera)
Project Partner(s)
A.P. Moller-Maersk, Man energy solutions, University of Copenhagen, and Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant
Project Period
September 2020 - August 2023
Research Funding
EUDP
Project description
The core technology in this project is the new marine fuels called CLEO, which are mainly composed by lignin and ethanol. Lignin is the second most abundant biopolymer in the nature and by-products of paper production. By combining low-cost lignin and bio-ethanol, CLEO has the special characteristic as a production of sustainable, cost-effective and competitive biofuel. The objective of this project are 1) Establishing the method to apply CLEO to marine engines, 2) Studying several types of CLEO to develop it into a more competitive biofuel from the view of an internal combustion engine, and 3) Understanding the mechanisms of the combustion and emission of the CLEO fuel. The amount of samples of CLEO are limited, therefore we use a small-scale compression ignition engine (CI engine), which is used for marine engines in general. The PhD student will run the small-scale CI engine with CLEO and develop the way to handle CLEO as a fuel of CI engines.
One of the big challenges is modifying the conventional injection system because the ethanol in CLEO easily evaporates and form a sticky deposit inside the injection system. We modified the injection system of the small-scale CI engine to be able to circulate and pressurize the fuel inside the fuel line from the fuel tank to injection. We will also conduct experiments for measuring the ignition delay using Ignition Quality Test(IQT) and observing spray forming in a constant volume chamber.
Sketch of modified small-scale CI engine setup