Fleet tests of UPM’s wood-based diesel show great results at VTT

UPM's first fleet tests of renewable diesel have proved that its BioVerno works in cars just as well as any regular diesel, the company has announced.

The fleet tests were conducted by the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, starting in May last year and running until early 2014.

Tests focused on investigating UPM's renewable diesel in terms of fuel functionality in engine and fuel consumption.

They were conducted with a fuel blend including 20% UPM BioVerno and 80% fossil diesel. With this blend fuel consumption matched the consumption of fossil diesel.

'The results were according to our expectations, because our renewable diesel echoes fossil diesel also in its chemical structure, unlike first generation biodiesels,' says Petri Kukkonen, VP, UPM Biofuels.

Experienced test drivers from VTT drove new Volkswagen Golf 1.6 TDI cars, provided by the VV-Auto Group, and gathered data for analysis during an altogether 80,000km test drive with four cars. The study included measurements in the laboratory at the beginning of the test and after 20,000 kilometres' driving. The approximately 20,000km test drive length was chosen based on the fact that, in Finland, the average yearly distance driven with cars is 17,000km. Analysis work at VTT was headed by principal scientist Juhani Laurikko.

'We studied UPM BioVerno diesel in various conditions: summer and winter weathers as well as on city roads and longer drives. The length of the drives varied from a few kilometres to several hundreds of kilometres on the road, just like real life situations. The engines of the test cars were working excellently in all conditions during the full length of the fleet testing,' says Laurikko.

Fleet testing of UPM BioVerno diesel will continue, together with VTT, using busses in the Helsinki metropolitan area in late 2014.