| Abstract | Renewable diesel (RD) and biodiesel (BD) are produced from renewable resources. Replacing petroleum diesel by RD and/or BD in power generation has the potential to reduce life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Therefore, the Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) has been developing a strategy to introduce RD, BD or their blends into its small and large vessel fleet to help reduce net GHG emissions. During this process, immediate questions that need to be addressed are what the optimal RD/BD blend ought to be, how much of the RD/BD blend can be introduced, and how these blends will affect the combustion and emissions performance of the engines powering the vessels. In this project, the National Research Council (NRC) and CCG work together to characterize and optimize the properties of RD, BD and their blends with petroleum-based ultra-low-sulfur diesel (ULSD), as well as evaluate the combustion and emissions performance of RD/BD/ULSD blends when applied to heavy-duty diesel engines. This interim report summarizes the findings from Task 2 of the project, which was designed to characterize properties of RD/BD blends at five different blending ratios. The findings reveal that although the BD volume percentage in a RD/BD blend causes the variation in fuel properties, most properties of the tested RD/BD blends meet the Canadian General Fuel Standard specifications except for cloud point and density. However, none of the five tested RD/BD blends meets the cloud point specification for type 15 (winter) marine diesel, suggesting that cold temperature performance is a challenge for the applications of the tested RD, BD, and their blends. All tested RD/BD blends meet the Canadian General Fuel Standard density specification for type 11 (summer) marine diesel, but the density does not meet the standard specification for type 15 marine diesel when BD volume percentage is lower than 20% in a RD/BD blend. There is a possibility that the RD and BD tested are not “winter” (i.e. type 15) diesel, since they were obtained from Province of British Columbia. |
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