Common Ethanol Fuel Mixtures - ED95

ED95

ED95 designates a blend of 95% ethanol and 5% ignition improver; it is used in modified diesel engines where high compression is used to ignite the fuel, as opposed to the operation of gasoline engines, where spark plugs are used. This fuel was developed by Swedish ethanol producer SEKAB. Because of the high ignition temperatures of pure ethanol, the addition of ignition improver is necessary for successful diesel engine operation. A diesel engine running on ethanol also has a higher compression ratio and an adapted fuel system.

This fuel has been used with success in many Swedish Scania buses since 1985, which has produced around 700 ethanol buses, more than 600 of them to Swedish cities, and more recently has also delivered ethanol buses for commercial service in Great Britain, Spain, Italy, Belgium, and Norway. As of June 2010 Stockholm has the largest ethanol ED95 bus fleet in the world.

As of 2010, the Swedish ED95 engine is in its third generation and already has complied with Euro 5 emission standards, without any kind of post-treatment of the exhaust gases. The ethanol-powered engine is also being certified as environmentally enhanced vehicle (EEV) in the Stockholm municipality. The EEV rule still has no date to enter into force in Europe and is stricter than the Euro 5 standard.

Nottingham became the first city in England to operate a regular bus service with ethanol-fueled vehicles. Three ED95 single-deck buses entered regular service in the city in March 2008. Soon after, Reading also introduced ED95 double-deck buses.

Under the auspices of the BioEthanol for Sustainable Transport project, more than 138 bioethanol ED95 buses were part of demonstration trial at four cities, three in Europe, and one in Brazil, between 2006 and 2009. A total of 127 ED95 buses operated in Stockholm, five buses operated in Madrid, three in La Spezia, and one in Brazil. In Brazil, the first Scania ED95 bus with a modified diesel engine was introduced as a trial in São Paulo city on December 2007, and since November 2009, two ED95 buses were in regular service. The Brazilian trial project ran for three years and performance and emissions were monitored by the National Reference Center on Biomass (CENBIO- Portuguese: Centro Nacional de Referência em Biomassa) at the Universidade de São Paulo.

In November 2010, the municipal government of São Paulo city signed an agreement with UNICA, Cosan, Scania and Viação Metropolitana, a local bus operator, to introduced a fleet of 50 ethanol-powered ED95 buses by May 2011. Scania manufactures the bus engine and chassis in its plant located in São Bernardo do Campo, São Paulo, using the same technology and fuel as the ED95 buses already operating in Stockholm. The bus body is a Brazilian CAIO. The first ethanol-powered buses were delivered in May 2011, and the 50 buses will start regular service in June 2011 in the southern region of São Paulo. The 50 ED95 buses had a cost of R$ 20 million (US$12.3 million) and due to the higher cost of the ED95 fuel and the lower energy content of ethanol as compared to diesel, one of the firms participating in the cooperation agreement, Raísen (a joint venture between Royal Dutch Shell and Cosan), supplies the fuel to the municipality at 70% of the market price of regular diesel.