Scania first with ethanol trucks

Scania is the first manufacturer able to offer the option of a complete changeover to liquid renewable fuel – a landmark on the road to sustainable urban transport.

Ethanol trucks for distribution and refuse collection are now entering final testing by customers. Customers can thus decide to run all their urban transport, including city bus services, on this renewable fuel. Scania's ethanol engines are based on diesel combustion, giving up to 40% better mileage than Otto combustion. Scania also undertakes to arrange the contacts, permits and certificates needed to secure fuel supply.

Scania regards ethanol as the most cost-efficient renewable fuel currently available for urban operation, since it can contribute to a sustainable public transport system without delay. Scania has produced ethanol bus engines for close to 20 years. The technology is mature and viable for intense everyday city service, as verified by bus operators in several cities.

The possibility of running both passenger and goods transport on the same renewable fuel is a unique offer from Scania. Starting next year, these new ethanol trucks combined with Scania's current range of ethanol buses offer operators, authorities or municipalities the opportunity to change their entire fleets to run on renewable fuel.

Ethanol is as easy to handle as other liquid fuels. Provided that it is produced from Brazilian sugar cane, ethanol provides a CO2 reduction of up to 90% compared to diesel fuel. Trial production from forest waste with integrated bioprocesses extracting heat or power indicates similarly high results.

Securing fuel supply

Scania's commitment to sustainability includes arranging the contacts, documentation and permits required to set up the fuel supply infrastructure in a district or region, as well as certification if required. Once the fuel infrastructure is in place, smaller local operators can join in.

Production of ethanol as a substitute for petrol is booming all over the world. The production infrastructure is thus already in place. The fuel needed for diesel combustion is ethanol with 5-7% additives to improve ignition and lubrication.

Ethanol engine with diesel combustion

Scania's ethanol engines work according to the diesel principle (compressionignition) and the efficiency of this third generation is up to diesel engine standards. Passenger cars running on ethanol or an ethanol/petrol mix have Otto engines with considerably lower efficiency.

Scania is the only manufacturer to master this diesel-ethanol technology.

The new ethanol engine is an adaptation of Scania's 9-litre diesel engine with charge-cooling and exhaust gas recirculation (EGR). The engine easily meets the enhanced environmentally friendly vehicle (EEV) standard, which is slightly stricter than Euro 5. With unit injectors for each cylinder and twin balance shafts located in the oil sump, the 5-cylinder engine runs smoothly and economically.

Performance is generous for a 9-litre unit. Power is 270 hp and torque a full 1200 Nm, resulting in excellent response and driveability. This ability to pull strongly from low revs allows the powertrain to be laid out for optimum fuel economy.

The engine is part of Scania's modular engine range, where components are shared to a large extent between engines of different configurations. Parts supply and maintenance are greatly helped, since parts are readily available and the engine technology is familiar to any Scania service workshop.

Mature technology

Scania has built 600 ethanol city buses since 1989, supplying most of them to Swedish cities with impressive environmental benefits. Ethanol burns cleanly by nature. Besides large CO2 reductions, other emissions have also been cut dramatically.

According to Stockholm Public Transport (SL), there are no operational drawbacks as long as scheduled maintenance requirements are followed. The buses themselves are completely standard, using regular Scania components. Scania ethanol buses are now operating in 12 Swedish cities and in a number of cities outside Sweden, for example in Madrid, Spain; La Spezia, Italy; Słupsk, Poland; Nottingham, UK; and São Paulo, Brazil; as well as in China and Australia. Further deliveries are pending to Denmark, Norway and Belgium. Interest is growing rapidly in Europe, South Africa and several Latin American countries and in USA the interest in ethanol is booming.

Several other cities have expressed interest, not least since the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) declared Stockholm a model of what can be achieved and described Scania's ethanol buses as one of the best existing solutions to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from urban traffic. Forty big cities around the world are involved in the CCI.

Scania's ethanol heritage

Scania's first ethanol engine was developed due to a fuel shortage in 1916. In more recent times, the first ethanol engine was developed in the late 1970s. This took place in Brazil following a governmental decision to substitute as much fossil fuel as possible with indigenous alternatives. A large part of the car population rapidly switched from petrol to ethanol or a mix.

Scania's research involved making a diesel engine with its superior efficiency run on ethanol. Efforts intensified in the mid-1980s when Stockholm Public Transport (SL) decided to start the transition to renewable fuels in Stockholm.

Scania's venerable 11-litre truck and bus engine was adapted to run on ethanol mixed with an ignition improver that facilitated cold-starting and combustion. With an output of 260 hp, this engine easily produced NOx and PM emissions that met the EU’s Euro 3 standards, which came into force in 2001, i.e. emission levels not even dreamt of in 1989.

Initially they replaced the diesel buses on central city lines with Scania ethanol buses. Today, ethanol buses complemented with some biogas buses are used on all central city routes. SL reports impressive environmental gains from this early decision and has now started to use ethanol buses in the suburbs as well.

Scania's second generation ethanol engine, launched with a new bus range in 1996, was based on the 9-litre engine. Available on the Scania OmniCity low-floor city bus, the engine produced 230 hp and achieved Euro 4 emission levels. And the third generation being launched now fulfils the toughest current standard, EEV.