Abstract
Bio-ethanol and biodiesel are expected to be the most applied biofuels in Europe on the short to mid-term, especially in blended form with gasoline and diesel respectively. There is a clear need to see what impact this blending will have on emissions and fuel consumption of current vehicles. Public information on this topic is mostly based on older technology. Within the Belgian research project BIOSES, emission and fuel consumption tests were performed on recent types of gasoline and flex-fuel vehicles running on bio-ethanol – gasoline blends. The vehicles were tested on proving ground with on-board emission measurement equipment, following different test cycles, among which the European test cycle (NEDC) and a real traffic based cycle (MOL30). The paper gives an overview and discussion of the test results.
KEYWORDS: vehicle emissions, fuel consumption, ethanol, flex-fuel, blend