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International policies aiming at replacing fossil fuels with bio-components are getting stronger. Hydrotreating of bio-oils is a sustainable way to produce premium quality diesel fuels from completely renewable feedstocks. The Finnish forestry company UPM has developed an innovative production process based on hydrotreatment to convert crude tall oil (CTO) into a high-quality renewable diesel fuel that can be used as a blending component or as 100% fuel in all diesel engines without modifications. Paraffinic, high cetane CTO renewable diesel allows efficient and clean combustion, reducing harmful air emissions in addition to not releasing any new CO2 into the atmosphere during their combustion. This study investigated the effect of CTO renewable diesel (BVO) on engine performance and exhaust emissions. Conventional market diesel served as a reference fuel.

Environmental concerns and government policies aiming to increase biofuel shares have led to the search for alternative fuels from a variety of renewable raw materials. The development of hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) type fuels has been strong in the Nordic countries, partly due to the early use of tall oil from the forest industry as feedstock. An innovative production process to convert crude tall oil (CTO) - a residue of pulp production - into high-quality renewable diesel fuel was developed by a Finnish forestry company UPM. Paraffinic, high cetane and low aromatic CTO renewable diesel allows efficient and clean combustion, resulting in reductions of local air pollution in addition to not releasing any new CO2 into the atmosphere during their combustion. This research investigated the influence of CTO renewable diesel on the performance and exhaust emissions of a non-road diesel engine.

The Finnish pulp and paper company, UPM, will start a biorefinery in Finland in 2014 to produce advanced renewable diesel in commercial scale. The fuel production is based on using crude tall oil (CTO), a wood-based residue of pulping process, as a raw material. The end product, CTO based renewable diesel called UPM BioVerno, is a novel high quality drop-in diesel fuel resembling fossil diesel. It reduces greenhouse gas emissions by up to 80 % when compared to fossil fuels. In this study, the CTO renewable diesel was studied as a blending component in regular mineral-oil based fossil diesel fuel in field testing. The functionality and performance of four (4) passenger cars was evaluated by comparing e.g. fuel consumption and exhaust emissions of CTO renewable diesel blend (R20UPM) with fossil reference fuel. The field test included 20.000 km on-road driving with each car by experienced drivers from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.

The residue and waste streams of existing industry offer feasible and sustainable raw materials for biofuel production. All kind of biomass contains carbon and hydrogen which can be turned into liquid form with suitable processes. Using hydrotreatment or Biomass-to-Liquid technologies (BTL) the liquid oil can be further converted into transportation biofuels. Hydrotreatment technology can be used to convert bio-oils and fats in to high quality diesel fuels that have superior fuel properties (e.g. low aromatic content and high cetane number) compared to regular diesel fuel and first generation ester-type diesel fuel. UPM has developed a new innovative technology based on hydrotreatment that can be used to convert Crude Tall Oil (CTO) into high quality renewable diesel fuel. This study concentrated on determining the functionality and possible effects of CTO based renewable diesel as a blending component on engine emissions and engine performance.