Sustainable Boating
ON THE GO WITH ALISON SMEDLEY
HVO
Almost a year since the newly formed IWA Sustainable Boating Group stumbled over HVO, Jonathan Mosse explains how they’ve been putting the fuel through its paces
B
efore hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) came onto the scene, first-generation biodiesel was already earning itself a bad name across pretty much all applications that involved storing diesel for extended periods, from farmers to boaters, through to those operating stand-by generators. Anywhere, in fact, where there was a significant gap between purchase and use. With a ten-year storage life and a chemical composition identical to mineral diesel (minus its aromatic, mineral and sulphur content) the IWA Sustainable Boating Group soon realised that second-generation HVO fuel, however, was a product that could potentially be a straight drop-in replacement, compatible with anything that was already in a boater’s fuel tank. At 90%-plus carbon neutral and with greatly reduced particulate and NOx emissions, HVO represented a simple first step along the road to the Government’s net zero carbon target looming less than 30 years away. Of equal importance, this massive gain came without any need to change the boat’s means of propulsion or to modify the existing engine in any way. Consequently, the 80,000-odd diesel engines powering today’s inland waterways craft could see out their days through to a natural retirement, more than justifying their embedded carbon content.
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FIND OUT MORE about IWA’s Sustainable Boating Group at waterways. org.uk/greenboating.
Too simple? Undoubtedly, electric drive engines in one form or another are the future, as the IWA Vision Paper robustly testifies. Until the hydrogen-powered fuel cell (or a possible derivative) holds sway, much of the on-board electricity will come from a diesel-fuelled generator, which in its turn can be powered with second generation biofuel in the form of HVO.
“At 90%-plus carbon neutral and with greatly reduced particulate and NOx emissions, HVO represented a simple first step along the road to the Government’s net zero carbon target” All very straightforward. Or it would be if we boaters simply stuck with using diesel for propulsion. The reality is, however, that we also heat and cook with it. There’s also the tendency among a significant proportion of boaters to lean towards the antique and the classic when it comes to choosing engines. From aficionados through to gongoozlers, we are all thrilled by the sound of a 1930s Bolinder approaching erratically down the cut. But would that same engine be equally ecstatic once transferred to a diet of HVO? While nearly every extant manufacturer of diesel engines in the world had given their blessing for the use of HVO in their products, nobody, as far as IWA was aware, had tested the fuel in the combination of uses a boater might put it to, nor in the range of classic engines powering both historic and contemporary IWA Waterways |
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19/10/2021 11:30
