Have you heard of this new low carbon diesel fuel?

Imperial signs hydrogen fuel deal
By Ben Cousins, Editor at LinkedIn News
Imperial Oil has signed a deal to supply hydrogen needed for its renewable diesel fuel plant. Imperial is looking to create renewable diesel fuel using hydrogen and vegetable oils from Alberta, as a low-carbon fuel source. The U.S.-based Air Products, beneficiaries of the deal, are in the process of building a hydrogen facility near Edmonton, which will be connected to Imperials own facility via a pipeline. Imperial expects to produce more than 1 billion litres of renewable diesel once its diesel plant is complete.

Is this the first low carbon diesel fuel?

Would you use this in your tractors?

Imperial will use Air Products low-carbon hydrogen to produce renewable diesel that substantially reduces greenhouse gas emissions relative to conventional production. The hydrogen and biofeedstock will be combined with a proprietary catalyst to produce premium low-carbon diesel fuel.

Note that low carbon intensity and renewable fuels covered in this paper are different than biodiesel fuel.

Low carbon intensity fuels are typically paraffinic hydrocarbons, hence these fuels, whether at 100% or blended, can be used as drop-in replacements for diesel fuel. These fuels have many benefits:

They can be renewable, which can significantly reduce the carbon footprint or Greenhouse Gas (GHG) impact of the engine up to 90%
They have a high cetane number.
They can be formulated to provide low temperature capability. Consult with your supplier to ensure the fuel meets the ambient temperature requirements of the application.
They can reduce the emissions of certain products of incomplete combustion, such as unburned hydrocarbons (UHC), soot, and carbon monoxide (CO). They may also reduce NOx emissions under certain engine loads and cycles.

This post was edited by ptfarmer on 09/08/2022 at 11:38 am.

I believe to start with it will go to airlines and other industries in the public eye where the companies that pay for the fuel can benefit from some sort of public image.

Im sure this thread will turn political, but it is of interest to farmers and all, and is worth discussing. If we can keep the politics of it out of it.

If we travel down the carbon path, agriculture is about the only one that can, at some financial cost, produce energy at a negative carbon footprint. Which makes all of
this of importance to farmers moving forwards.

Paul

All renewable and bio diesel (not the same thing) is lower in CO2 than diesel made from crude oil.
Both are made from the same stuff but with a little differant process.
Using hydrogen is just a differant way to break down the vegetable oil into diesel.
There is some fancy word for it that is above my pay grade.
Imperial Oil is just a Canadian name for Exxon.

I believe renewable diesel takes the cold better than bio diesel.
More on par with diesel made from crude.

We've been using renewable diesel for 5-6 years now. It compliments our CNG vehicles, but that's not why we use it. I don't have any complaints, other than it cleans out your fuel system and plugs your filters. I still have a Duramax plugged up because I never drive it. All the other vehicles and off road equipment blew threw the initiation and are doing fine. It burns cleaner than petroleum made from crude. Problem is, it's in limited supply and not going to power every vehicle in North America unless they find another way to manufacture it. Maybe this process will help.

Somewhat related...

Just read about this project using solar power to convert CO2 out of the air into kerosene. Target would be for aviation use as someplace I read that 5% of man-made CO2 is from that.

https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/solar-jet-fuel-made-out-of-thin-air/7325.article

https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/solar-kerosene-one-giant-leap-for-humankind/

And a real scientific paper on it here:

https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(22)00286-0?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS2542435122002860%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

The original diesel engine was designed to run on peanut oil at the time.

Thanks, cool article.
sounds like some people are reinventing diesel fuel.

i guess i don't understand low carbon fuels.

carbon gives energy to the fuels, oil, gas, wood, corn ect. x lbs of carbon produces Y btu's (or Kwh) of energy. less carbon = less energy per gallon/lb/cubic feet ect ect

it takes Y amount of energy to do something. like many of our gas tractors take 4.5gal/hour of gas doing hard field work. it takes a certain amount of energy to plow an acre of ground. doesn't matter where that energy comes from. if burning ethanol figure on 6.2gal/hour instead of 4.5 or maybe 4 gal/hr in diesel (just examples based on btu/gal) your mileage may vary


if the fuel is able to be burned more efficiently (which seems to be renewable diesel claims) then i can see it having lower carbon output for work done.

using food to power our cars isn't a good idea. we will pay for it one way or another. higher $ at pump or higher $ at the grocer

in reality this whole thing is a scam. when they get a 3 day forecast right I might believe their 30 year 1C degree GLOBAL temperature rise let alone their 100 year predictions.

off the soap box