Rolls-Royce has gained approval for its mtu Series 4000 and Series 1600 diesel engines for use with sustainable fuels in power generation applications.

Following successful trials on the test bench and in the field, Rolls-Royce business unit Power Systems has approved its Series 1600 and Series 4000 generator sets for use with EN15940 synthetic diesel fuels.

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In addition to GtL (Gas to Liquid) and CtL (Coal to Liquid), these fuels include also the sustainable fuels BtL (Biomass to Liquid), HVO (Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil) and PtL (Power to Liquid), such as e-diesel.

They can all replace conventional diesel fuel, which is made from fossil petroleum.

“There is already a lot of interest in HVO in particular from many customers in the energy industry and data center business who want to improve their carbon footprint,” explained Tobias Ostermaier, president stationary power solutions at Rolls-Royce Power Systems. “The results from pilot customers show a significant reduction in greenhouse gases, nitrogen oxide and particulate emissions by using HVO instead of fossil diesel in their gensets.”

According to Rolls-Royce, the advantages of HVO include clean combustion with a reduction in particulate emissions of up to 80%, nitrogen oxide emissions by an average of 8% and (depending on the manufacturing process and feedstock) CO2 emissions by up to 90% compared to fossil diesel. Additionally, HVO fuel generates only about as many greenhouse gases as were absorbed by the plants during the growth of the biomass.

The tests confirmed that mtu engines perform equally well when using HVO (as compared to diesel) in terms of maximum power, load acceptance and fuel consumption.

HVO is a drop-in fuel, which means that there are no adaptions needed to the diesel plant infrastructure, hardware or software for its use. In addition, the storage stability of this synthetic fuel is significantly better than that of biodiesel, making it even more attractive to emergency power system operators.

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