Coming on the heels of Cummins’ decision against using urea-selective catalytic reduction (SCR) on its heaviest over-the-road trucks meeting U.S. EPA 2010 highway diesel emissions limits, International likewise decided to scrap SCR.

International’s “MaxxForce” brand diesel engines will “meet the stringent U.S. federal 2010 emissions standards for all its core applications without the use of selective catalytic reduction (SCR) systems,” the company announced Oct 31. Engine controls, air-handling and exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) will be used instead.

Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) announced Oct. 31 that it will launch the “Clean Diesel V” consortium November 8.

The consortium already includes more than 40 members including diesel engine makers, component suppliers and diesel fuel manufacturers. It’s open to new members as well.

U.S. EPA issued an “advisory” warning that producers and sellers that fail to conform to ASTM D-6751 biodiesel standards can face big fines.

“EPA plans to increase enforcement efforts to ensure that biodiesel producers are complying with EPA’s standards, in particular ensuring that all biodiesel meets ASTM D 6751” standards, the “advisory” says.

The European Parliament passed an “own-initiative” non-binding bill October 24 calling for legislation to cap new-car emissions of carbon dioxide at 125 grams/kilometer by 2015.

Intertanko, the world association of oil and chemical ocean tanker ships, is hitting back against refiner claims that converting the world’s intermediate fuel oil (IFO) to lower-sulfur gasoline/diesel (MDO) for ship bunkers isn’t practical or would cause excessive CO2 at refineries.

“The world is looking to the IMO [International Maritime Organization] to introduce one single global standard, or as near to that as it can get, to counter the threat of regional legislation,” Intertanko said in a statement this month.

Sandton, South Africa – While underground coal gasification (UCG) is making a comeback – initially targeting power generation applications – researchers are only now discovering how to combine UCG with Fischer-Tropsch (FT) fuels conversion.

At the 24th International Pittsburgh Coal Conference here, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) researchers revealed results of a study explaining what obstacles need to be overcome with UCG syngas, and what type of FT can be used most effectively with different types of coals, catalysts and oxygen/carbon dioxide (CO2) contents.

A new report by the U.S. “Task Force on Strategic Unconventional Fuels” finds that aggressive government incentive programs could lead to a 2.6 million barrels/day coal-to-liquid (CTL) fuels industry along with a 2.5 million b/d oil-shale industry.

The report, produced by the U.S. Secretaries of Energy, Defense and Interior, counted on input from governors in key U.S. states with large coal, oil-shale and tar-sands reserves, as well as areas that could boost oil production from CO2 injection (enhanced oil recovery, or EOR).

An academic study on the potential of Qatar to supply large quantities of gas-to-liquids (GTL) diesel to Asia-Pacific markets finds that GTL diesel would only replace refinery crude-based ultra-low sulfur diesel (ULSD) and fail to command a price premium over ULSD.

The 2007 study, “The Potential of Gas to Liquids Technology in the Energy Market: The Case of Qatar,” by American University of Beirut professor Riad Chedid, appeared in the academic journal, Energy Policy (Vol. 35, Issue 10), published by Elsevier.

The first meeting of the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB) “low-carbon fuel standard” (LCFS) Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) workgroup this month decided to use the well-known GREET (Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Transportation) model, with modifications.

But there’s far less agreement on the modifications themselves, a reflection of the number of inputs and sensitivities that might be needed to make GREET an effective tool for the LCFS.