Alternative Fuel for Micro Cars

Daimler Southeast Asia presented the ten micro-cars of the Smart brand manufactured by Mercedes-Benz in front of the art museum in Singapore in August of 2008. These automobiles represent innovation in a twin sense. Designed as  city cars and found in many metropolises, the Smarts have not yet been introduced to the market in this Southeast Asian country. So far, Smart is only available in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Brunei.

The tanks were filled with alternative fuels, among them biodiesel derived from jatropha, a plant that grows wild in Asia, one with a high oil content but inedible for man and beast alike. Instead, farmers use hedgerows of the plant to safeguard their grain against pests and erosion.

“The jatropha gas for these cars comes from the Indian state of Gujarat,” relates Alvin Gan, a field staff member of the LANXESS business unit Basic Chemicals (BAC) in Singapore. “There, the Daimler Group has launched a five-year pilot project to cultivate jatropha and process it to create biodiesel.” In the moist, warm tropical climate, however, the fuel would quickly turn rancid: “The naturally occurring vitamin E, which normally helps keep plant-based oils from oxidizing in the air, is not enough to give the fuel a long shelf life,” Gan explains.

Daimler took this problem to LANXESS. After all, the chemicals group is the market leader for biodiesel antioxidants. In Europe, biodiesel is primarily derived from rapeseed oil. Chemist Axel Ingendoh, a Baynox expert at the business unit Basic Chemicals, notes: “We tested the application with jatropha in our laboratory in Leverkusen (Germany).

Jatropha oil and jatropha biodiesel are more prone to turning rancid than domestic rapeseed oil and rapeseed biodiesel. We recommended the highly effective agent in Baynox plus for the experiments. It is demonstrably suited for fuels, because it burns residue-free, preventing damage to the engine.”

With the help of the test fleet, which is scheduled to spend two years on the roads of Singapore, Daimler wants to optimize fuel consumption and exhaust emissions in the use of alternative energies. The two test cars driving with jatropha biodiesel were made available to two partner companies – Cargill (an American provider of agricultural products) and Daimler themselves.

Fuel derived from jatropha protects not only the land used to cultivate food but the environment as well: emissions of uncombusted hydrocarbons are only half the level of petroleum-based biodiesel, and emission of particulate matter is reduced by two-thirds. Admittedly, fuel consumption in the tiny country of Singapore is not terribly high. Still, its larger neighbors – Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines have already set green goals of their own.

“To date, the biodiesel industry in Singapore has predominantly used palm oil,” relates Alvin Gan. But this is a foodstuff, which makes it controversial. “The jatropha project is a good reference for our customers,” according to the Singapore resident. “It demonstrates how biodiesel with Baynox plus can benefit man and the environment.”

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