Advanced fuel designed for advanced engines: The Digest’s 2017 Multi-Slide Guide to the DOE’s Co-Optima Initiative

What’s the CoOptima initiative? Out of the DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy, the initiative aims to accelerate the introduction of affordable, scalable, and sustainable biofuels and high-efficiency, low-emission vehicle engines. This project’s ambitious, first-of-its-kind approach simultaneously tackles fuel and engine innovation to co-optimize performance of both elements and provide dramatic and rapid cuts in fuel use and emissions. It’s a research and development collaboration between DOE, nine national laboratories, and industry with two goals. The first is the near term efficiency of spark ignition engines. That is maximizing the capability of what we have today. The second is aimed at new fuels, advanced engines including compression engines.

“The goal is a new fuel in the market in 10 years,” said DOE Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Reuben Sarkar, driver of the initiative. “We are looking for solutions that address environment, provide economic impact and are compatible with existing   infrastructure. Among the tasks is a definitive assessment of fuel properties that will help define engine parameters that utilize those properties. And, a database of fuel blendstocks to create novel fuel formulations. We are using this to drive our advanced combustion and hybridization efforts.”

Here’s an illuminating overview of the project as presented at the DOE’s Project Peer Review event earlier this year.