OREANDA-NEWS. March 10, 2011. The state-owned transport corporation has been using biofuel on a trial basis in more than 1,000 buses since 2006 and is keen to extend it to the whole fleet. The blended fuel that the corporation currently uses in the 1,000 buses is 7.7 per cent ethanol, 91.8 per cent diesel and 0.5 per cent solubiliser.

The performance of the buses using biofuel has been very encouraging. There was no drop in power or fuel efficiency and emissions were reduced by over 55%. KSRTC has used biofuel on buses for a collective run of over 3 lakh kilometres. Theoretically, KSRTC can use ethanol-blended fuel for all its buses, but it has to conform to a government regulation that says that only fuel certified by the Bureau of Indian Standards can be used in vehicles in India.

“The corporation has been in talks with the Ministry of Petroleum, Indian Oil Corporation, Automotive Research Association of India and bus manufacturers in this regard,” said KSRTC MD Gaurav Gupta. “It will call for an investigation and decision-making at the Government of India level for extended use of biofuel for vehicles. KSTRC has done field trials on ethanol-based biofuel while lab trials in this regard are on. The field trials are mainly to see how suitable the fuel is for use over an extended period,” Mr Gupta.

The extension of biofuel use will also depend on the OEM (original equipment manufacturer) suppliers’ warranty on new vehicles. Government of India regulations currently allow 5 per cent mix of ethanol in gasoline for transportation fuel. Using biofuel extensively will see a drop in fuel costs for KSRTC in the long run, depending, of course, on the price of diesel.