Sustainable Engineering - A Life Cycle Analysis of E85 Fuels - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

As the number of vehicles on the road increases so does the amount of fossil fuels burnt. Due to this, an increase in carbon emissions is ever on the rise, along with a depleting amount of crude oil left on Earth. Is there a sustainable alternative fuel for the use in automotive vehicles? The challenge today is to reduce CO2 emissions. Engineers have begun to research and develop new fuels and enhanced engine technology. Renewable fuels are an alternative in which sustainable energy resources, such as crops, are used to produce the fuel. Biofuel is another alternative, like renewable fuels, biofuels take sugars and/or starch to mix with a percentage of traditional unleaded petrol. With the potential for burning less fossil fuels, CO2 emissions can be reduced; a reality which presented itself when the fuel crisis hit Brazil in the 1970s. During this time and up until 2006, Ethanol fuel produced from sugar cane was used as an alternative to Petrol, which resulted in a low CO2 emissions transport sector within Brazil. Conventionally ethanol is starch or sugar based, but is difficult to directly compared to petrol as starch or sugar based ethanol does not produce the same output as petrol. For this study, cellulosic ethanol will be discussed as this is more comparable to petrol. Ethanol fuel is considered as a biofuel, as it comes in commonly E10, E15 and E85. This number denotes the percentage of ethanol within the fuel, i.e. 10%, 15% and 85% ethanol. As E85 is the most sustainable of the range of ethanol fuels, containing 85% ethanol and 15% fuel, it will be the choice for this study, in which manufacture, production, performance, efficiency, emissions, cost and a Life Cycle Analysis will be carried out, to validate whether E85 is a sustainable option when compared to traditional petrol, on the road and in a Motorsport application.

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