IPTC 11754
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DME a Clean Fuel for the Future
Jean-Alain Taupy, Total S.A.
Copyright 2007, International Petroleum Technology Conference
This paper was prepared for presentation at the International Petroleum Technology
Conference held in Dubai, U.A.E., 4–6 December 2007.
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Extended Abstract
General introduction
Safeguard of global environment and human health in this
environment is more and more highlighted as huge stakes for
mankind in energy-related issues. It is a key point for a
sustainable development of our world.
The global warming issue is not the only one to be tackled in
the coming years; internal and external air pollutions linked
with fuel combustion are also on the spot either in developed
countries or in developing ones.
To combat pollutions we may either act on the devices using
fuels to absorb and treat pollutants or to remove potential
pollutants from the fuel itself or to find a non-polluting fuel.
Both ways were and are explored on existing fuels which are
generally multiple molecule fuels except natural gas.
For multiple molecule fuels, these two ways are complex,
expensive and perhaps drive to a dead-end especially if we
have to deal with some very small particles.
In the beginning of the nineties, some US companies and
research centers looked for a safe molecule, easy to produce
and with a clean combustion i.e. without emission of the main
well-known pollutants.
Such a molecule would enable engine makers to simplify their
combustion systems and then make savings.
The result of this “Envirolene” project was DME, for Di-
Methyl Ether, the simplest ether.
By virtue of its chemical composition (CH3-O-CH3), DME
has no direct carbon bonds giving it a property of no
particulate matter (PM) (commonly referred to as “soot”)
emission from combustion.
Compared to other unique molecule fuel such as methanol,
DME is non toxic and then used as aerosol propellant for
personal usages such as spray for hair dressing or wart
removers.
DME became spray propellant thanks also to its harmlessness
to the ozone layer as it decomposes in the atmosphere.
Moreover, DME is as easy to handle as LPG and its calorific
value per kg is close to coal, better than methanol, much better
than hydrogen and less than LPG, Diesel or methane. Per liter,
it is close to methanol, methane or propane and largely greater
than hydrogen.
We will first insist on some of the environmental and health
issues the world has to deal with.
Then, we will show the advantages of DME compared to other
fuel in that respect.
Last, we will show that DME, as it may be produced from
various sources, may be a good candidate as clean energy
carrier in a sustainable development perspective before the
possible advent of hydrogen, probably in the long term.
Global Environmental and Health issues:
In terms of environment, the world is facing two main issues:
• On one hand, global warming and its impacts on the
world economy.
• On the other hand, the rapid decline of outdoor air
quality in large cities with increasing traffic and the
everlasting bad quality of indoor air in poor countries
linked to the usage of coal or biomass for heating and
cooking.
Human activity is now accepted as the main reason of this
global warming through greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions
mainly CO2. But some scientists have begun to recognize (see
www.enviroliteracy.org ) that “black carbon – a component of
PM, as having the potential to cause changes in climate. Soot
is comprised of microscopic particles released”, “when
burning fossil or biomass fuels. In most developed countries,
diesel fuels are the main source of black carbon”, mainly from
trucks; “elsewhere, the main sources are from the burning of
wood, animal dung, vegetable oil, and other biomass fuels.
Soot absorbs sunlight and, therefore, heats the surrounding air,
also reducing the amount of sunlight that reaches the ground,
resulting in a cooler surface. The heated air can create an
unstable atmosphere resulting in rising air, forming clouds and
bringing rainfall to areas heavily concentrated with soot. The
rising air is often balanced by an increase in sinking air in
neighbouring regions, which tends to prevent cloud formation
and rainfall. An example of this rising and sinking air can be
found in southern and northern China. Southern China has
experienced rising air forcing increased rainfall and flooding
due to soot and other pollutants, while in northern China
sinking air has increased the occurrence of dust storms and has
resulted in droughts.
2 IPTC 11754
Soot has also been found to cause climate changes in areas of
higher latitude where ice and snow are more common.
Typically, ice and snow reflect sunlight rather than absorb it
due to having a white background, also known as an albedo
effect. When snow and ice are covered in soot, the soot
absorbs the sunlight warming the ice and snow and causing a
faster than normal melt. As more melting occurs, the warming
effect increases as the soot becomes more concentrated on the
snow surface and the land surface is exposed. A study by the
Goddard Institute and Columbia University's Earth Institute
found that the effect that soot has on snow albedo may be
contributing to the trend of early spring in the Northern
Hemisphere. Earlier springs may be a further cause of the
thinning of Arctic sea ice, and the melting of glaciers and
permafrost.
Studies continue to indicate that soot is a likely factor in
climate change. In 2003, a computer simulation done by
NASA suggested that black soot may be responsible for up to
25 percent of the observed global warming over the past
century. Another NASA experiment found that the amount of
sunlight absorbed by soot was two-to-four times larger than
previously assumed. However, the extent that black soot has
an effect on climate change will continue to be debated since it
has only recently become a factor included in studies of global
warming”.
An indeed , in August 2006, IFC, the private branch of World
Bank, has stated that black carbon contributes two to three
thousand times more in greenhouse gas emissions than CO2.
Mark Z. Jacobson, Associate Professor of Civil and
Environmental Engineering at Stanford University is one of
the mentioned scientists. For him, “control of fossil-fuel black
carbon and organic matter may be the most effective method
of slowing global warming, in terms of the speed and
magnitude of its effect on climate. Not only does soot warm
the air to a much greater extent than does carbon dioxide per
unit mass, but the lifetime of soot in the air (weeks to months)
is much less than is that of carbon dioxide (50 to 200 years).
As such, removing soot emissions may have a faster effect on
slowing global warming than removing carbon dioxide
emissions”. Unfortunately, BC was not listed in 1997 Kyoto
Protocol, probably because it is not a greenhouse gas.
Concerning air pollution, (see www.ucsusa.org) “soot particles
come directly in the exhaust gas from fuel combustion and
contribute to unhealthy levels of particulate matter (PM). In
addition, the gaseous emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and
sulphur oxides (SOx) from diesel engines for instance form
additional particulates when they react with other atmospheric
agents. PM comes in many sizes, though all just a fraction of
the width of a human hair, from coarse PM (less than 10
microns in diameter) to fine PM (less than 2.5 microns) to
ultra fine PM (less than 0.1 microns). Most diesel soot is in the
fine and ultra fine categories, with ultra fine particles making
up 80-95% of soot. Ultra fine particles are the most
dangerous, however, as they are small enough to penetrate the
cells of the lungs”.
Soot may then “harm your body, causing chronic bronchitis
and asthma” or acting “as carriers of carcinogenic
compounds”. “Diesel soot itself is classified by many
government agencies as either a probable or known cancer-
causing agent. For example, the California Air Resources
Board has concluded that diesel soot is responsible for 70
percent of the state's risk of cancer from airborne toxics”.
“Diesel pollution can be deadly, causing premature mortality
through cancer or heart and respiratory illnesses. In the
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population as a whole, studies have shown a 26% increase in
mortality in people living in soot-polluted cities”.
Indoor air pollution is another major cause of death. The
phasing out of indoor biomass and coal burning would provide
the additional benefit of reducing the 2.7 million people who
die annually from air pollution, as estimated by the World
Health Organization.
Unfortunately, in the World Energy outlook 2006, published
last November by the International Energy Agency, it is
forecast that the number of people using dirty traditional
biomass, such as fuel wood, charcoal, agricultural waste and
animal dung for cooking will continue to grow from 2.5
billion now to 2.7 billion in 2030, knowing that smoke from
biomass is already the third cause of annual death according to
World Health Organization.
According to World Bank (August 2006), “Over one billion
Chinese suffer from harmful emissions due to the burning of
solid fuels in their homes. More than one million die every
year from air pollution and more than 60 percent of these
deaths are the result of indoor smog”, which confirms the
importance of the stake in some developing countries.
The consciousness of political authorities and public opinion
is growing in more and more countries; the struggle around
more stringent emission regulation is becoming harder as we
have seen notably this year in the EU commission for the new
compulsory level of CO2 emitted by cars in 2012. Likewise,
the air quality and especially the content in PM is more and
more controlled and debated as we have seen for instance in
the French tube in Paris mid 2007.
Advantages of DME in this respect:
DME is a volatile organic compound (VOC) but it is non-
carcinogenic, non-teratogenic, non-mutagenic, and as already
mentioned non toxic as it was shown in the 80s by propellant
grade DME producers like Dupont for instance.
The lifetime and global warming potential have been modeled
in 1998 by D.A. Good and alia from Purdue University,
Indiana. They concluded that “DME appears to be
atmospherically benign with respect to its ability to affect
global climate. A short atmospheric lifetime” (5.1 days) “and a
lack of significant absorption features in the window region
combine to yield a small Global Warming Potential (GWP)”
(0,3 on a 100-year time horizon compared with 1 for CO2 and
21 for methane).
The big advantage of DME as a fuel is the cleanliness of its
combustion: no Sox are produced; Nox emissions are much
lower than with Diesel Oil and almost no soot is emitted.
That is the reason why DME has been quoted for the first time
by the International Energy Agency in its latest and already
quoted World Energy Outlook in its chapter 15 dealing with
energy for cooking in developing countries. Among the
proposed solutions, we find alternative fuel at reasonable costs
like LPG and DME.
IPTC 11754 3

In fact, DME as a fuel is being developed very quickly in For 2010 hybrid vehicles,
China as a LPG substitute or complement mainly from coal
but also from natural gas. The objective of NDRC, the official
planning Chinese organization is to have a production capacity
of 20 Mt/y in 2020 mainly from coal.

According to Princeton researchers (Larson & Yang, 2004),
almost 25% of BC emissions globally originate in China and
83% of Chinese BC emissions come from residential energy
use. Moreover, compared to direct burning of coal, using
DME will save 33% of coal taking into account difference of
energy efficiency and coal conversion into DME:
On one hand, 1MJ of energy for cooking needs 5MJ of Coal or
1,67 MJ of DME; on the other hand, to get 1,67 MJ of DME,
3,33 MJ of Coal are required.
In a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), “use of DME in cooking
emits up to 40 percent less carbon dioxide (CO2) than the
direct burning of coal.”
Energy energy efficiency and reduction of pollution are
clearly one of the reasons of the Chinese policy towards DME
and of the support IFC gave last year to one of the new
Chinese DME players: XinAo Group.
As an automotive fuel, thanks to this sootless combustion
there is then no need to capture PM through any device such
as Diesel Particulate Filters (DPF) for instance, to meet the
most stringent existing regulations in the US, in Japan or in
the EU. It has been shown in a demonstration conference
organized by the Japan International Transport Institute in
March 2006 in Washington D.C.
DME is clearly the best in class in in Tank to Wheels (TtW)
analyses combining energy efficiency and CO2eq emissions
Thanks to its high Cetane number (55-60), DME is indeed a
good fuel for Compressed Ignition (CI) engines which have
much better energy efficiency than Spark Ignited (SI) engines.
Analyses regularly published by Concawe and Eucar whose
last issue is dated March 2007 shows:
For 2002 ICE vehicles
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As no DPF are required with DME to meet new emission
regulations in the US, in Japan or in the EU, we have to
compare DME without DPF with Diesel oil with DPF, and
then DME remains in terms of energy efficiency and CO2eq
emissions.
If we refer anew to Mark Z. Jacobson, he wrote in 2002 in the
Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres, that “despite
lower CO2 emissions, diesel cars may promote more global
warming than gasoline cars because they can emit 25 to 400
times more mass of particulate black carbon and associated
organic matter ("soot") per kilometre [mile]. The warming due
to soot may more than offset the cooling due to reduced
carbon dioxide emissions over several decades”.
"Whereas carbon dioxide clearly causes most global warming,
control of shorter-lived warming constituents, such as black
carbon, should have a faster effect on slowing warming.”
“The small amount of black carbon and organic matter emitted
by diesel may warm the atmosphere more over 100 years than
the additional carbon dioxide emitted by gasoline”.
Of course, in Europe in the US and in Japan, particulate
emissions from vehicles are expected to decline over the next
decade mainly thanks to the new regulations.
We find of course the same evolution for heavy duty trucks,
which represents roughly 50% of PM emissions, on the right
hand side of the following figure from Japanese Ministry of
Land and Transportation (MLIT).

“The “best in class” was obtained from DME with an adapted

Diesel engine, with 126.8 g CO2eq/km.” can we read in the
Tank to Wheels part.
4 IPTC 11754

And they say in conclusion:

“Hydrogen fuel cells show unprecedented efficiencies, but

with the current technical challenges of hydrogen storage,
hydrogen production efficiencies, fuel cell durability, high

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infrastructure costs, and high fuel cell costs, there is little
likelihood that automotive fuel cell systems will significantly
penetrate the commercial market in the near future.
As an alternative fuel, DME can address energy security,
energy conservation, environmental concerns, and the
pragmatic realization of depleting petroleum reserves. Most
importantly, these concerns can be addressed immediately in a
cost-effective manner with current commercialized technology
(i.e., CIDI and hybrid), and do not rely on future technologies
(fuel processors or fuel cells) where the timeframe of market
It is then clear that DME is a good way to reduce emissions of penetration is uncertain. As fuel processors and fuel cells are
carbon dioxide but also of black carbon to combat global introduced to the public, DME can be further exploited as a
warming and to enable the phasing out of indoor biomass and non-toxic, non-corrosive, environmentally benign hydrogen
coal burning. carrier produced from domestic resources.”
DME a sustainable clean energy carrier: Then DME may be one of the missing links between the
petroleum era and the hydrogen era tackling in the same time
According to Troy A. Semelsberger & Rodney L. Borup from the environnemental and health issue the world is facing. It
Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, in Journal of explains why a growing number of countries and companies
Power Sources (2006): like my company, Total are studying the way to develop DME
“Current transportation fuels are based on petroleum, a usage as a fuel.
resource that is being depleted, and whose importation has
political and societal ramifications. Hydrogen is viewed by
many as the ultimate ‘end-game’ fuel. A transition from
petroleum to DME to hydrogen may be more cost effective
than a step change to hydrogen. DME can be introduced and
exploited with existing technologies, and enable the eventual
implementation of advanced technologies, such as fuel cells”.
Because DME is produced from natural gas or coal, and will
be produced from biomass in the near future, DME can
increase the energy security of many countries by displacing
petroleum derived fuels”.
They also remind some other advantages for DME such as:
“• Using existing engine technology, DME ether produces the
least amount of well-to-wheel greenhouse gas emissions
compared to FT diesel, FT naptha, biodiesel, bionaptha,
methanol, methane, and ethanol”.
• Dimethyl ether as a turbine fuel demonstrates an increase in
efficiency, and decreased NOx and CO compared to methane
and liquid naptha.
• On-board automotive fuel processors using methanol and
DME exhibit the lowest start-up energies and the lowest fuel
processor volumes—correlating to higher overall efficiencies
as compared to ethanol, methane, and gasoline fueled fuel
processor fuel cell vehicles.
• DME can produce hydrogen-rich fuel-cell feeds with
hydrogen yields equivalent to those of methanol at comparable
operating temperatures.
• The infrastructure of DME is less cost intensive than that for
hydrogen because DME can use the existing LPG and natural
gas infrastructures for transport and storage.”