Synthetic Fuel - THIS is the future of internal combustion!

good morning and welcome to the tree-lined pretty streets of Mr heritage and as you may see I'm in my 1999 Rover 800 the test turbo and this is a car that I love it's a car that I adore it is my baby I bought it as a 400 pound Scrapper and I restored it now into a 450 pound Scrapper I'm very very proud of it and I love it and I want to drive it long long into the future so does that mean I'm going to have it converted to Electric do I have to take out that Soulful 2-liter T-Series with a Garrett T25 turbo on it and throw it in the bin no I don't I like the turbo noise I like the this of my Forge dump valve there is an alternative and that is why I'm here at Vista Heritage to look at it to fill my car up to the brim with it and then to drive it home and see what it's like to live with it [Music] [Music] and of all the things that are going on in the world of classic cars and in motoring and in sustainable Technologies what have you we are here at bista Heritage today to look at one of them this is David Richardson from coreton fuels and you're working on something we're here to test out today and this is well this is a huge part of of the future of internal combustion from from what I can see yeah we are producing um sustainable fuels within sustainable fuels actually you've got a few categories there right I mean we we've got everything from Advanced sort of BIOS all the way through to synthetics and and then even within that you've got a subset what we term as being e fuels and you probably would have heard a lot of talk about about that at the moment but um we've predominantly been looking at the sort of advanced bios now out of all of those effectively what we're trying to do is we're just trying to replace the fossil chemistry that we use today with something that's sustainable why we we want to stop digging or extracting the oil that's in the ground now and use something that is already freely available either in the atmosphere whether it's grown or whether it's a waste product to produce a liquid that we can use and drop into today's Vehicles classic vehicles Heritage vehicles to give them some longevity whilst clearly making sure that we're not impacting the environment any further yeah this isn't a zero emissions solution there are still emissions coming out of the car yeah so I think the easiest way to look at it is we're just trying to recycle the carbon that's already freely in the atmosphere or whether it's in embedded in plants or biomass or biowaste at the moment we're taking that carbon and then we're you we're effectively sort of splitting it apart again in order to reform it to make the liquid as what we're using in these fuels today and one of the terms that you'll hear people use is around second generation waste right um so so these can be things like starch slows for instance or the wheat they're leftover wheat that comes from sort of corn harvesting actually what happens with a lot of that it ends up just getting sort of turned back into into the soil yeah now there's no nutritional value in that when it turns back into us all and actually what it can end up doing is actually creating methane and the methane that comes off that is actually it's it's about 10 times worse than CO2 from a from a global warming perspective it's actually it's a really good idea to sort of take that waste process it make an ethanol from it and then we can then re-further process that ethanol to to make these liquid hydrocarbons that are very similar to the the fuels that you use today at the four court and the other way is we can look at mechanical extraction yeah and that really is what it says we are sucking the CO2 out the atmosphere and then we're putting that back into a process we're getting hydrogen as well from splitting water through electrolysis reforming that CO2 the hydrogen back together again to again reform these liquids so this mechanical means that the the E fuel roots and they are going to be really the long-term solution to to liquids because there's an abundance of CO2 in the atmosphere um you're only limited by the amount of renewable electricity that you've got to run those facilities now as long as you have got an abundance of renewable electricity it doesn't matter how efficient they are as long as you can carry on running them they will carry on producing liquids for you and they're they are going to be a great um solution for the for the long term but at the moment these these bio routes that we're we're looking at they are viable now because there is a good amount of it that's available in the market today that we can use and as I said they can make an immediate impact today the the liquid that is going to go into my car in a bit what is it what like what's because it's not oil it's not no it's not so so what is it that allows it to function and work in the same way that petrol does okay you know what you extract from all at the moment is effectively it's carbon hydrogen because that's sitting in there okay and through cracking refining distilling you get your different cuts yes that come off that one of those cuts is going to be petrol it'll be diesel the aviation fuel okay what we're doing with these wastes and we and I said especially when we talk about the the ethanol to gasoline conversion technology that we're doing what you've got within ethanol you've got hydrogen you've got carbon you've got oxygen now the one thing we don't want is the oxygen so part of the process is it strips that oxygen out yeah and it takes the carbon and hydrogen atoms that are left over it reforms them into a into a gas into a liquid back through distillation column and what you get out that carbon hydrogen is a broad range set of molecules that are identical to the molecules that you'll get out the out the oil that is so it's a similar thing like if you the more you do to it you get different uses for it absolutely and this is a really important thing because we also need to look at the redundancy of these Technologies but also what else they can they can replace as well but if you just have to look around you everything you touch the clothes that you wear glasses that you've got on laptops phones everything they've all got an element of all in them yes somewhere so what we're trying to do with these Technologies is say well look actually we want to produce a a bio or sustainable crude that can then go back into these other Industries but there's a paints industry whether it's making tires whether it's making your glasses really close so there's a lot of uses for doing this and actually you can't just stop producing fuels no because you've got to do something with the rest of it you you start to reduce your ability to make all the other chemicals eventually so you need to look at a more holistic picture and deal with the the general problem which is stop taking all out the ground and actually replace it with a a sustainable alternative now going back to the use of it being in a car we've mentioned what I say we I'm an idiot you have mentioned the e word and people are going to want to know about that because obviously at the moment there's a lot of concern over E10 fuels and Classics aren't necessarily used every day and you leave any 10 in it can be bad for your fuel lines what's the sort of ethanol impact or angle of this synthetic fuel the great thing with this is that although we might start with ethanol the process what comes out the end of it but looks nothing like ethanol right it is a normal hydrocarbon it doesn't have the corrosive properties of ethanol um it doesn't have the uh the volatile characteristics of ethanol either that you don't want thing in the vehicle so I mean it's so you're right ethanol can be a problem for older vehicles so the gaskets the seals some of the fuel tanks as well ethanol can be quite corrosive to them it can it can make some of the rubbers and the Plastics go brittle we remove the ethanol from that you don't have that problem at all it's like cooking with wine it's an ingredient but it's not wine at the end of it it's absolutely that absolutely just to put it in idiot service for me yeah I mean when we produce fuels we we have the option to to leave out certain chemicals that we know uh are not suitable for for certain applications and in the likes of or Classics ethanol not great so we could leave that out obviously classic cars are quite a broad church and we're talking about cars from you know the turn of the century through to today is it safe in basically any internal combustion petrol engine I think these simple answer is yeah I mean if you go way back to the late 1800s early 1900s when you had the very first internal combustion engines there they were all running on uh sort of light Spirits yes and they've just evolved over the time and and the quality of fuel has evolved over time as as different um cars or different engine technology has has sort of matured through um now it's probably safe to say that most vehicles that are you know 100 years old are probably fine running on a normal Petrol in two to eight Drive fuel design there's no ethanol in there and they'll run fine there are some that do really like these some very special fuels now the great thing around the technology that we've got is that we can make them look and behave however we want them to so if we do want a very sort of light type of fuel for you know pre-war carved or actually we we've got some solutions around that that we've been working and we have done already likewise when we move forward through the sort of 1960s up to 1980s again you know a much more typical type fuel um that still got sort of protection additives in there anti-valve seat recession additives in there because again they're still important aspects of fuel from that era that would have had you know in there to protect those engines obviously that's great for classic cars what classic cars aren't your your soul Target as a business are they it's yeah yeah so to put that into context uh Europe 270 million vehicles on the road Legacy vehicles that are on the road in the UK there's about 35 36 million vehicles on the road the age of those Vehicles is getting older and older I think we think by 20 30 20 35 the age of that vehicle Fleet is probably going to be well over 15 years old at the moment it's around about 12 years old change it to electric vehicles at the moment they are expensive the very heavily subsidized not only by the oems themselves but also by the governments and some governments are starting to pull out on that I've seen Sweden recently Swedish government has stopped it and it's been uproar because it's meant the price the vehicles have gone up the one thing that we we want to get across is that we're not against electrification it will get there eventually but the Technologies aren't mature enough yet the infrastructure around it isn't mature enough for you no I'm certainly not in the UK from an architectural point of view we're not geared up for that electrification just isn't right for that application just yet but we will get there in the meantime let's do something now for the vehicles that are currently sitting on the roads as I said like the vehicles that you've got here today even the modern vehicles are coming through now we can do something about reducing the life cycle emissions yeah I'm going to be clear about that by using sustainable fuels and then there's the knock-on as well isn't there because for you know for everyone who's got a a car like my the test here that I you know I cherish it and I use it sparingly and you know people around here with these with these Classics going way back to sort of pre-war it's not just them these Legacy Vehicles they also support a massive massive industry and that's jobs and that's people's incomes and that's their lives and then it all bleeds onto economy and everything it's not it's not just about cars it's for me it needs to be a sliding thing it needs to be and either are rather than this absolute you have to have an electric car it doesn't I think they're great I'm into them um I'd have one if I had the facilities internal combustion can't just go away that's not the answer and I just want to sort of come back as well you know we we talk a lot about um about cars and motorbikes exactly the same you know there's there's a lot of people that have got a real vested interest there also the forestry equipment as well you know the chainsaws that you use the hedge trimmers anything like that that currently uses a liquid fuel these are an alternative or a complementary solution to those there are people that are going to want electric and that's absolutely fine there's a good route for that um but they they're not suitable for out of every application no so a at the moment how do you get it are what are the plans to get it and B is there anything the viewer the Enthusiast the driver can do to help you further bring it to Market uh yeah so the middle put sort of a point there around the development side I mean we're already working with a lot of people to help sort of test these fuels further um and we've already done a lot of work with people like ckl for instance we're working with the hcva yes and it's members to you know look at certain Vehicles like yourselves to prove that the fuel can work and it's robust and it doesn't have any adverse effects and and that and that's there in order to sort of build up sort of consumer sort of confidence in in the products I mean they are after all an identical fuel to what you get at the forecast but without the ethanol yeah because it's worth pointing out this is logistically in terms of getting it to people's cars when when that when that retail solution comes along this is a drop-in replacement for petrol you could you could put this in a petrol station you you absolutely some very liquid drop this pretty much and actually you know we we know we look at what we're standing to next to at the moment the idea is that we would like to build up and have a number of these sort of units um dotted around the country and you can go along and you can either directly fill your car or you can maybe fill a Jerry can and take that away with you and then fill up in your own garage at home yeah um so so we are looking at putting that out and getting them in there if you've gone to the full court and filled up with a a typical you know fuel from from one of the major all companies and then you decide actually I want to go and fill up with this sustainable fuel um they you know they can mix it's not a thing yeah I made made the joke about cleaning out the petrol so you don't they do mix you you don't even need to do that you don't you don't need to run down one time to put this in and then run this down and again put something else in there's no need for that it's just incredibly clever isn't it trying to change consumer habits is hard yes okay so we we need to make it especially that we've had for a century yeah absolutely absolutely and again we know we've built up you know 150 years worth of infrastructure around oil you know liquid distribution and actually we do Supply a lot of our fuels in Drums as well and they they can go off to to garages or they could be sort of over over the Internet sort of purge is so what we're looking to do is build up networker distribution points and they could even be DIY stores for instance you know your garden centers where you currently go to get certain things from at the moment so you know they they will be readily available um you know we do want to make it easy for for the general consumer to to get hold of them and use them actually I've got I've kept this old vehicle I haven't gone another new one you know we've got all the embodied carbon associated with it and also what I'm doing is I'm not taking carbon out the ground when I'm fueling it I'm using a sustainable fuel at the same time so you can hopefully sort of ward off some of those criticisms that you might get from from some sort of corners and you know as a society we have got into this well you know we'll we'll use something throw it away buy something new again throw it away and actually this is perfect you know we should be is reusing Recycling and this is a really good way of doing that you know we're recycling carbon this time so the last thing then before we put some in the car I think this is a question a lot of people will have what impact does it have if any on fuel economy so there's certainly no loss of fuel economy right at all um I'd actually say you know we've done a a piece of work with one of the oems recently and they actually returned about a 10 improvement over over the standard fuel now part of that is is a little bit more sort of coincidental in terms of some of the chemistry that we use um but yeah are you you certainly won't get any loss in it at all and you know they they will run at their Optimum as what as when the cars originally designed for brilliant well let's stick some in the card and and I know this car I've had this car five years I've rebuilt it from the ground up I know that car intimately how it drives I drove it here 100 miles this morning so uh it drives any different I don't know [Music] [Music] all right then so we have a full tank and it's important to note that this morning I put 30 pounds worth of V power in this to get to bista from Bristol um and that just about did it because 30 pounds worth of v-power is about that much fuel so this is now well pretty much 97 percent synthetic or sustainable fuel now which is quite impressive I've run the car for a little bit did a couple of laps around um Mr Heritage itself because when I hit the road I wanted to be driving on the synthetic Fuel and the car drives exactly the same yourself but let's let's drop into second and kick its teeth in a little bit hang on [Music] well it's no slower so that's pretty good that's um and this is obviously a turbocharged 16 valve fuel injected car and yeah it's driving all right but to go back to the original point I'm going to drive it home now obviously because it's a big thing to put in my pocket can't really fit it on the train so I have to drive it back home and that's another 100 miles and the point is though it drives fine it's completely interchangeable with existing fuel systems so that's why it's compatible with so many classic cars it's why it's compatible with almost any petrol vehicle really and it makes you wish that it was around so much sooner because people are very impassioned about the environment and carbon and so on and so forth and justifiably so we only get the one planet but I'm not here to David Attenborough I'm here to talk to you as a classic car Enthusiast of which I am one you know I want to drive this car for as long as I can possibly drive it I know it might not be your cup of tea but I love this car and I don't want to do an electric conversion on it no I don't want to see it out loud nor do I want to see it taxed to such a level that I can't sustain owning it I think this is massive you know you saw it being put in an Austin seven in that old Jag s tank in the old Elvis that was all the same fuel is in this car right now and all of them run and all of them are happy so my name is Izzy and I'm a starter motor Ambassador and startimosa is a charity that's based here at Mr Heritage that aims to get young people in old cars so I get to drive around cars like this 1967 Jaguar S-Type occasionally and also it's enabled me to buy my own car I've got an MX-5 now which is not quite classic yet but it's getting there I think the sustainable fuel is a good way to keep these cars alive I think the electric conversions are good for some people but not for others so sustainable fuel good for the special cars that the engine made the car so I think it depends what type of car it is and what they're using it for so I think what curriton are doing is doing is really important because I think a lot of people have a negative perception of classic cars and that they produce a lot of emissions and things like that and if we are using sustainable fuels to power our classic cars then it's kind of taking that negativity out of the industry and keeping it alive without people having sort of negative images of it if I could run my MX-5 on it it would it would be great it would mean that I kind of felt better about driving it around more and that kind of thing I have a couple cars I've got an MG an Austin seven and a 40th anniversary Mini Cooper cool so there's the little red seven Jaws oh no that's star Tomatoes right my Austin seven is still a barn find at the moment right okay um so it's in the middle of a restoration and will that be getting sustainable fuel as and when the time comes depending on price yes yeah so you're probably wondering now how much does it cost well I did speak to David about this and the problem is we are in a development stage at the moment so it's not a retail product the the product is is refined the product is is real it's in my car it exists it's it's a thing but there is still work to do to get it out there in a retail capacity so at the moment it's not cheap but the more people that adopt it the more it grows the more development that is put into it you know the cheaper it will get because it is cheaper from a wholesale point of view to produce than traditional petrol and Diesel and then of course there is the involvement of the hcva the historical and classic vehicle Alliance now if you're not familiar with the hcva you should be but for the sake of those of you who may wonder and may want to get involved I had a little chat with Gary Wilson who's uh the top dog there and this is what he had to say about the future of the fuel and getting the fuel out there and what's needed on a governmental level to make it a bit more of a reality we we have um programs such as what we call instant offset doing offset in your carbon but there's no substitute for actually getting to a net zero position which is what we're trying to do with the sustainable fuels and you told me something very interesting about the Net Zero from a from a government point of view they've said we've got to get there they haven't said how everyone just jumps to the electric car or wind farm endgame but there isn't actually any road map to how we get there it's just a goal yeah absolutely so there's a there's the Net Zero by 2050 which using sustainable fuels we believe that um the sector the classic vehicle sector can can definitely get there by 2050. the department for transport is there's clearly a zero tailpipe discussion and that's aiming but aiming to get there for new vehicles by 2035 but those agendas seem to get quite often mixed up is net Net Zero versus zero tailpipe yeah and clear it clearly we we need to be focusing on Net Zero by 2050 and one of the ways to do that is by using sustainable fuels and the carotene fuel that we're working with and that we're testing here today is a means of doing that but I think to we've got a lot of interest from our membership which is we're a trade organization and a lot of the trade would like to be using the fuels yeah and putting it into their customers cars they're the early adopters you know the fuel initially at low volumes will be slightly expensive but one of the things we want to do working with government is to try and encourage the use of the fuels is to reduce the duty or ideally remove the duty from the fuels so that we can get some early adoption that's the one thing we want to do the second thing we'd like to do is work with government to try and access grant funding because most of the low emissions technology funding is focused on electric vehicle Technologies whether that be hydrogen fuel cell or whether that be battery technologies and clearly sustainable fuels is important not just for the classic sector but by the time we get to 2050 there's still going to be millions of of regular cars you know more modern cars should I say on the road yeah so our role is to raise awareness that this is a technology that can get our sector the Motorsport sector and also the wider Park of cars that are going to be on the roads by 2015 get that whole agenda recognized and supported and that's I guess that's where when I was speaking to David villarano saying what can people do if they want to get involved or if they want to help us on and so forth and one thing they can do apart from follow what you know cartoon are doing via their channels is engage with the hcva go to your website which I'll link to Below in the description they can become members they can get updated they can become you know a a smaller voice within a much larger voice yeah absolutely I mean we we're an industry organization so and the industry is huge I mean it's vast it's everything from auction houses to restorers to sales groups to um to sales organizations um insurers so on and so but a lot of the issues that are pertinent to the industry are pertinent to the owners and enthusiasts so owners can join directly as well as joining their Club organizations but they can join us and and um there's a vast array of memberships we like to encourage the youngsters to join yeah and so under 21s are free um and his family membership individual owner membership and then clearly the trade and corporate membership as well and by by joining it means we can do more yeah and and we talked earlier about grant funding to do some of the research well if we do get grant funding from the government to do more research on the sustainable fuels or other activities typically they have to be part funded even for a small organization like those so we might have to put 10 towards it so by having members we can imagine we can then do more yeah to collect it out absolutely we very much welcome um anyone to get in touch and discuss discuss how they can support and get involved and it's great that that companies want to put this sustainable fuels in their cars we've got a number of organizations calling and saying can we have the fuel now because we'd like to when we restore a car or when we service a car we'd like to put the fuel in it to give it back to our customers send it out for the tank of that yeah which is great that's a great way of doing it absolutely thank you for the the insight and in terms of what you're doing and what the hcva is doing and like I say have a look in the link below and yeah get involved it's all about sort of strength in numbers um but you know there's other stuff going on there across the whole industry so if you're into your classic Specialist or unique vehicles then HTTP is a good place to be and obviously with future updates about the sustainable fuel as well thank you very much Gary thanks Chris [Music] as you can see Gary there from the hcva is extremely passionate about the sustainable fuel angle and it's important work that they're doing by getting it into Parliament and getting it in front of MPS and yeah okay so Parliament and MPS might not be a particularly uh fun Topic at the moment but the ones that the hcva are talking to the ones are involved in transporting environment seem to be involved and seem to be listening the assumption is that we will go renewable energies and electric cars and this that and the other end these are all great things and and we should be doing those as well but it shouldn't be an and or there shouldn't be one or the other it shouldn't be an absolute it should be something that is a is a mix of solutions you know as I'm demonstrating here now by driving it the stuff is real it's here it's it works the the car drives no different thus far it makes the hobby have a richer more involved more prosperous future and really is that not what it's all about is that not what we all want and considering you can Chuck it in everything from your 1930 something Elvis to you 1999 Rover 800 of a test Turbo it does seem to be quite the solution but does it work long term well let's cut to me in a few minutes well I'll say a few minutes let's cut something in a few seconds for you but for me it'll be a couple of hours when I've got back home and uh I'll report back see you shortly [Music] well there we are then back home and that was 111 miles back it's got just over three quarters of a tank still in it when the guys from Carrollton filled it up it was on the reserve so it has been driving all the way back from Bicester purely on the synthetic Fuel and the car performed perfectly it drove exactly the same as it did it's anecdotal but it seems a little a little bit better on fuel Richard was saying that they have seen sort of 10 increase in uh fuel economy or decreased increase 10 better fuel economy um and I would I would enter of course this car isn't so Advanced just to have a trip computer or anything like that fundamentally though the car drove brilliantly when I got on the M4 I did a bit of slowing down and speed it up and got it on Boost and got it off boost and it seems happy it's you wouldn't know the difference this is a technology we need to be pushing needs people like you other enthusiasts to be behind it because this is I'm not saying it's the definitive future but it is a significant part of the future as we touched on earlier in the video the government has said we need to get to Net Zero they haven't said how and this is a fantastic way of contributing to that while also keeping our Classics going and fueling them in a way that they're used to and there's no ethanol in here I can now leave this car sat in the garage knowing it's not going to rot the fuel lines out it's the perfect solution if you ask me Carl loves it I love it smells like petrol tastes like petrol presumably I didn't actually sip any yeah get behind it there are links below and you can learn more you can get involved with the hcva you can follow what character they're doing and yeah the more people know about it the more people that are behind it the quicker it can get into a retail environment and then we can all start enjoying it and hopefully that'll take some of the pressure off us as classic car enthusiasts yeah this is the future I reckon what a great thing I want to take it back out now but I can't because it's nice so I'm going to go back in and take out for a blast tomorrow until then don't forget to like And subscribe

Channel: Car & Classic

Views: 196,143

Keywords: coryton, car and classic, hcva, historic classic vehicle alliance, synthetic fuel, sustainable fuel, internal combustion, motoring, automotive, classic car, retro car, engine technology, fuel, petrol, petrol engine, ev, electric classic, bicester, bicester heritage, fuel technology, rover, rover vitesse, jaguar, jaguar s type, austin, austin 7, audi tt, audi, modern classic, pre war classic

Id: MNrGZC8h4Fg

Length: 31min 20sec (1880 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 04 2023