Wine and cheese, the most ‘proprietary’ biofuel ingredient

Despite the wide spread of electric cars, there is an alternative to gasoline and diesel that can be a salvation for combustion engines: Biofuels. This isn’t the first time we’ve talked about them, but it’s an example With the most picturesque ingredients: wine and cheese. And the model promoted thanks to them is the most “royal”.

It was 1969 when the Queen of England gave her son Prince Charles, Aston Martin DB6 Volante Series II On his twenty-first birthday. Powered by a 4.0-liter, 282-horsepower six-cylinder engine, the model has been one of his staples of recent decades. Of course, some time ago she did not use conventional fuel: she works with it Biofuel made from surplus English white wine (Chapel Down) and whey that is extracted when making cheese (particularly the Stilton variety).

Aston Martin biofuel for Prince Charles is produced by green fuel, Company based in Gloucestershire. He worked with RS Williams Ltd, a company that specializes in restoring British brand models, to convert the DB6 so that it could run on this biofuel made up of 95 percent gasoline and 85 percent bioethanol, which is made with fermented materials. Sugars from wine and whey.

Advantages of biofuels

Converting a modern model to run on this fuel is easier than converting an Aston Martin DB6, which requires a new fuel line and a number of engine timing adjustments to run smoothly. In any case, the process Cheaper To replace the combustion engine with an all-electric engine to reduce emissions as much as possible.

Among the benefits associated with this wine and cheese biofuel are its emissions: they are cleaner, and if they are made, as they are, with by-products from other industries, the environmental benefits are increased. According to its owner, the Aston Martin DB6 “It works better and is more powerful.” To this we must add that it is usually cheaper than conventional gasoline, but it is very difficult to find it at the pumps of service stations. Independence from oil had to come at a cost.

side b

Yes, biofuel made from excess wine and whey residue from cheese has a B side. Experts believe Prince Charles’s Aston Martin DB6 is an isolated, non-scalable case. The European Organization for Transport and Environment (T&E), at the time, indicated that “Not to be confused with a serious solution to decarbonize vehicles.”

Zuzzola, Suitable for low volume use Because producing it on a large scale will not help mitigate the impact of cars on climate change because it is necessary to have specific and broad crops: sugarcane, for example, has a high energy density to produce enough ethanol, but requires a lot of land to grow. According to T&E, this reduction in emissions would have a disastrous impact on the environment.