3Y Energy has completed a one-year R&D project on biofuels and marine engines titled "Developing an Integrated Platform for the Evaluation, Verification and Optimization of Biofuel Blends", funded by the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA).
Biofuels — including HVO (renewable diesel), FAME (biodiesel), and alcohol- and ether-based blends — deliver tangible environmental benefits while remaining compatible with existing ship infrastructure and engines. Under the project, the team built an integrated evaluation platform purpose-designed for biofuels, enabling comprehensive testing of engine performance and emissions across multiple blends and operating conditions.
Key findings include: engine performance remained largely stable across different loads and injection pressures for most of the biofuel blends tested; NOx emissions varied mainly with in-cylinder temperature and oxygen availability; and collaborative real-vessel trials on low-speed marine engines confirmed that FAME blends up to B50 deliver combustion characteristics and mechanical reliability comparable to VLSFO.
A second major outcome is the project's Biofuel Database, which aggregates experimental, literature, and simulation data on fuel properties, engine performance, and emissions. Building on this resource, the team developed a multi-scale co-optimisation workflow to support next-generation marine engine design.
The results provide robust technical references to accelerate biofuel adoption in global shipping, offering near-term drop-in solutions that require minimal engine modifications to support IMO and MPA decarbonisation targets. The company believes the future of maritime energy will be multi-fuel, shaped by both decarbonisation and energy security, and will continue work in biofuel R&D and commercialisation, including advanced optical detection and AI-driven robotics for the biofuel supply chain.
Originally shared on LinkedIn.