A port in Brazil has successfully tested hydrotreated vegetable oil as an alternative to marine diesel fuel, according to MarineLog.
Maritime companies Efen and Wilson Sons conducted Brazil's first HVO refueling. It was successfully completed at Açu Liquid Bulk Terminal, just northeast of Rio de Janeiro.
HVO is a biofuel made of soybean, canola, and other oils, as well as animal fats, used frying oil, and sewage sludge. The process creates a hydrocarbon without oxygen, which Wilson Sons claims (per MarineLog) allows it to burn with 80% fewer harmful emissions than traditional diesel fuel. It can also be used as a direct replacement for diesel, so ships don't need to make retrofits to use it.
HVO has been making modest inroads in a number of industries. The fuel has been used to decarbonize trucking companies, pharmaceutical deliveries, and tour buses. While promising, a Cerulogy study suggested there's only so much waste oil available, limiting HVO's ability to scale up. Otherwise, manufacturing it would require using virgin resources, which would incur other land use and food supply costs — ultimately undercutting its benefits in sustainability.
Ships and boats only account for about 3% of transportation emissions, according to the EPA, but every little bit matters. Dirty energy is contributing to pollution that heats the atmosphere, exacerbates violent weather patterns, and melts ice caps. These melting ice caps raise sea levels and both acidify and warm oceans, which destabilizes marine ecosystems. The more that cleaner fuel alternatives are adopted, the fewer of those harmful by-products we'll encounter.
Brazilian partners were keen to expand the use of HVO in maritime shipping.
"We want to foster energy transition projects in emission-intensive industries, such as shipping," Eugenio Figueiredo, CEO of the Port of Açu, said. "In the future, we can set up HVO plants and other facilities for low-carbon fuels."
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