Diesel isobutanol blending mandate likely this year, MoRTH Secy

India is likely to bring a mandate on blending isobutanol with diesel as early as this year, said V Umashankar, Secretary, Ministry of Roads Transport and Highways (MoRTH) at CII Multimodal Transportation and Logistics Summit on May 29.

“Blending of diesel has been looked into with great seriousness. Bharat Petroleum is already undertaking strategic research for iso-butanol blending with diesel. And the results are very encouraging. It is quite likely that the blending mandate will start coming in somewhere later this year. And diesel consumption is almost two times that of petrol consumption. So, the impact on blending in terms of diesel is concerned will have a far greater impact on our energy security than even petrol blending,” said Umashankar.

Unlike petrol, where ethanol blending has reached 20% (E20), there is no such mandate for diesel currently. 

This comes amid talks between the government agencies and automobile industry to increase the base ethanol blend in petrol from 20% to 25% before the end of this decade.

The government is also expected to bring a draft notification on truck-trailer soon. Explaining the rationale for the same, Umashankar said, this will to a large extent take care of the concerns that pertain to building an ecosystem that needs battery-swapping, and battery charging for electric heavy duty commercial vehicles. 

“If you have to look at battery swapping, then there will have to be several points which will have to be provided with this kind of an infrastructure for swapping to happen. If you look at battery charging, then it is going to take a good amount of time for the charging to happen. So, does the truck lie idle at that point in time? So, what we are looking at is what we call a tractor-trailer interchangeability. Where you don’t need to swap the battery, you swap the entire front part of the truck. So, we have detachable containers, so the trailer is detachable. And you can have that as the charging itself,” he said, adding that charging will take place at specific locations.

Speaking of the government’s experiments with hydrogen logistics, Umashankar indicated, “The results are very good. The key cost is comparable with respect to other forms of logistics travel. It’s not high. Only high-cost element there is the hydrogen re-fuelling stations. And presently in the pilot projects government support (is) being provided”.

He added that recently in Delhi, between Delhi and Faridabad and Delhi and Noida, hydrogen buses at the public transport level have also been introduced.

Additionally, the secretary also shared that Multi-Lane Free Flow (MLFF), the barrier-less tolling system that eliminates the need for vehicle to stop or slow down at toll-plazas is likely to be introduced in the forthcoming year.

“This (MLFF) has already been introduced in two toll plazas and it’s working very successfully. And the third one is likely to go live in the next 8-10 days. We plan to expand this to all the toll plazas, four lane plus toll plazas across the country within the forthcoming year. Along with that is an advanced traffic management system that we are going to put in place. We have got the first proposal for the Delhi NCR approved. And the issuance of the bids and the implementation of the project will start very shortly,” he added.

In order to increase the average speed of vehicles that move on the roads and highways, MoRTH plans to focus on expressways and access-controlled highways so that slow moving and fast-moving traffic can be segregated.