Liquid fuels made from food waste could be the lifeline internal combustion engines need to survive
Electrification is all the rage in transport politics but there may be a game-changer waiting in the wings – one that not only protects the environment but also secures a future for the internal combustion engine.
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Sustainable fuels could be just that solution (although they will require significant investment), offering a practical, near-term alternative to relying on hard-to-store hydrogen or costly batteries.
This is especially pertinent for the motorcycling sector, where demand for EVs has failed to match that of the automotive world.
Not only that, but UK based supplier Coryton – who sell a range of sustainable drop-in biofuel branded as ‘Sustain’ – say that the technology could now be stepped up significantly to increase supply.
The Department for Transport’s own Renewable Fuel Statistics 2019 forecast 83% greenhouse gas emissions savings against fossil fuels if the nation were to make the switch entirely.
Despite the apparent benefits, Coryton told MCN that their Sustain products receives no subsidies and are penalised the same way as fossil fuels.
Unlike first-generation biofuels, which were predominantly based on crop production such as rapeseed, second-generation biofuels (now the standard) are created by rotting down biological waste or decomposing organic matter in wastewater treatment plants – meaning they don’t take away arable land that could have contributed to food growth.
These are not to be confused with e-fuels, which strip CO2 from the air and combine it with hydrogen via electrolysis – a process not yet scalable for mainstream use.
Cortyon’s Luke Goldsmith, UK Sales Director, told MCN: “When you think of a wheat harvest, there’s a lot of waste material that comes off that.
So we take that, treat it with an enzyme to break down this complex carbohydrate into a simple one, then ferment it into ethanol.
“Then the clever bit comes. Using lots of chemistry and catalysts, you can convert that to gasoline.
“There is no ethanol in the Sustain range of products and that’s deliberate; the ethanol to gasoline just denotes where the raw material came from. When we convert the ethanol, we make hydrocarbons – carbon and hydrogen together – exactly what you derive from fossil fuels and what the engine combusts. With it being a drop-in [fuel] people can use it straight away and it’s making sustainability accessible to people.”
Coryton’s products can be used in existing engines without mods, offering indistinguishable performance from their dinosaur-derived counterparts; so much so that the fuels are already being used in the motorsport world, including the World Rally Championship.
Sustain say their products can also be easily distributed to motorists by the infrastructure put in place by the oil industry.
The firm say that with sufficient investment, their annual production could feasibly increase to hundreds of millions of litres within just five years – if the government shift their focus away from tailpipe emissions, that is.
This would be a significant jump on the roughly 30 million litres they are currently capable of churning out on an annual basis, but it would still be a drop in the ocean against the 46.388 billion litres of petrol and diesel combined that the UK requires every 12 months.
At present, sustainable fuels are about three times more expensive than fossil fuels – due in part to the higher production costs and the lack of economies of scale. “Oil is cheap, and that makes it hard for new technologies to compete,” Coryton’s David Richardson acknowledged.
How do they stack up?
As well as being a simpler solution than changing the whole refuelling infrastructure, second-gen biofuels compare well with EVs in terms of environmental impact – with EVs having a production carbon footprint up to 80% higher than a comparable ICE machine.
“There aren’t enough resources to electrify the whole fleet,” Sustain’s David Richardson points out. “There are around 40 million vehicles in the UK. Trying to replace all of them with EVs would be impossible.”
An EV’s carbon payback period, assuming it runs on renewable energy, is around 30,000 miles – stretching much longer in countries with fossil-based grids.
By contrast, a combustion motorcycle (or car) running on sustainable fuel is already a lower-carbon option from the outset, with a much longer period before it becomes less environmentally efficient than the electric alternative.
“You also have to consider EVs typically don’t last as long as ICE vehicles – either through being easily written off, or just because of a lack of confidence in buying high-mileage examples. Therefore, you’ve got to produce more EVs, which means you’re just front-loading the environment with CO2.”
