Trial of renewable diesel for Rio buses

Amyris Brasil, a subsidiary of Amyris, has announced that it will supply renewable diesel during a 12-month fleet test involving 20 city buses in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The renewable fuel derived from sugarcane, known locally as Diesel de Cana, will be blended at a 30 per cent rate with petroleum-derived diesel and used in Mercedes-Benz buses operated by Viação Saens Peña, a Rio-based bus operator. The Rio transportation federation, Fetranspor, will use the data collected during this fleet test to evaluate
March 23, 2012 Read time: 2 mins

Amyris Brasil, a subsidiary of 4229 Amyris, has announced that it will supply renewable diesel during a 12-month fleet test involving 20 city buses in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The renewable fuel derived from sugarcane, known locally as Diesel de Cana, will be blended at a 30 per cent rate with petroleum-derived diesel and used in 1685 Mercedes-Benz buses operated by Viação Saens Peña, a Rio-based bus operator. The Rio transportation federation, Fetranspor, will use the data collected during this fleet test to evaluate the engine and environmental benefits of Amyris’s renewable diesel. The results of the fleet test will be presented at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) taking place in Rio in June 2012.

The city of Rio de Janeiro has more than 8,000 buses consuming about 280 million litres of diesel per year. The Rio fleet test is expected to validate the significant reduction of nitrogen oxide and particulate matter emissions evidenced in recent Mercedes-Benz engine tests with a 30 per cent blend of Amyris’s renewable diesel.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Lane departure warning, blind spot detection help drivers avoid trouble, say researchers
    September 7, 2017
    According to new research from the US Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), lane departure warning, a technology designed to address an often-fatal type of crash, is preventing crashes on US roads. A separate study shows that blind spot detection also is yielding benefits when it comes to preventing lane-change crashes.
    Read More
  • Clean diesel projects ‘best choice for use of VW settlement’
    February 13, 2017
    Clean diesel technology is the best choice for mitigating NOx emissions in the US as part of the Volkswagen Environmental Mitigation Trust, according to the non-profit education association Diesel Technology Forum. In a presentation at the 2017 Energy Policy Outlook Conference hosted by the National Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO), Ezra Finkin, the policy director for the Forum, highlighted why clean diesel technology is the best and most cost-effective choice for the immediate mitigation
    Read More
  • Dynamic charging boosts electric vehicles’ potential
    December 16, 2014
    With an increasing need to use electric vehicles in city centres to reduce pollution, David Crawford looks at various solutions to power delivery. The UN’s September 2014 Climate Summit has added fresh momentum to the drive to increase urban electric vehicle (EV) takeup. It has launched the Urban Electric Mobility Initiative, which wants to see EVs accounting for 30% of all urban travel by 2030, and make cities worldwide more friendly to their use. Encouragingly, the plan is being well supported by commerci
    Read More
  • Transportation guru sceptical about V2V technology
    September 12, 2014
    Robert Poole, co-founder of the Reason Foundation, has worked on transportation policy for more than three decades and is an influential voice on tolling, congestion pricing and infrastructure finance. Writing in his monthly newsletter (link http://reason.org/news/show/surface-transportation-news-131) he voices his scepticism of vehicle to vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) technology which may one day allow cars to communicate with each other and with traffic infrastructure to avoid colli
    Read More

Highlighted Content