With 90% less CO2 to Sylt
Passengers can now travel to the German island of Sylt by land in an even more climate-friendly way than before. RDC Autozug Sylt and Rolls-Royce have recently started HVO field trials with a Vectron DE diesel-electric locomotive equipped with an mtu engine of type 4000 R04, which meets the strict EU Stage IIIB emission regulations for rail drives. “The use of HVO is another important step towards improving the carbon footprint of our products,” said Anita Hallmann, Head of Corporate Communications at RDC Deutschland Group. “This is a matter close to our hearts and is very positively received in the region. We hope it will have a signal effect on the entire industry – and would like to see more support from politics for this immediately effective climate protection measure.” Following the successful completion of the tests with RDC, Rolls-Royce also intends to generally release the Series 4000 R04 engines for use with HVO and other EN15940 synthetic diesel fuels, as early as 2023. RDC is already using HVO in other services since July 2022.
HVO use significantly reduces CO2, nitrogen oxide and particulate emissions
Waste vegetable and animal fats and used vegetable oils can be used as base materials for HVO, which are converted into hydrocarbons by means of a catalytic reaction with the addition of hydrogen. Through this process, the properties of the fats and vegetable oils are adapted to diesel fuel and can supplement it as an admixture or replace it completely. The benefits of HVO are clean combustion with reductions in particulate emissions of up to 80 percent, nitrogen oxide emissions by an average of eight percent, and (depending on the manufacturing process and feedstock) CO2 emissions by up to 90 percent compared to fossil diesel. Because HVO fuel is produced from renewable raw materials, its combustion only generates about as much greenhouse gas as were absorbed by the plants during the growth of the biomass. Thanks to its production from residual and waste materials, there is no competition with food production.
Target: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 35% by 2030 with new fuels and mtu technologies
Rolls-Royce announced in 2021, as part of its sustainability programme “Net Zero at Power Systems”, that it would realign its product portfolio so that by 2030, new fuels and mtu technologies can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 35 per cent compared to 2019.
Press photos are available for download from
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