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Diesel engines dominate in Heavy-Duty applications due to its better fuel economy, higher durability and larger reliability. Fuels derived from petroleum resources are depleting daily and it’s become a scarce resource for future generation to come. With growing environmental consciousness of the adverse implications brought by excessive usage of fossil fuels, the battle for finding alternative fuels as their substitution is getting heated up. At present, renewable energy from bio-fuels has been peddled as one of the most promising substitution for petroleum derived diesel. Using bio-ethanol blended diesel fuel for automobile can significantly reduce diesel usage and exhaust greenhouse gases. Bio-ethanol can be produced by alcoholic fermentation of sucrose or simple sugars. The main drawback is that ethanol is immiscible with diesel fuel over a wide range of temperatures, and the hygroscopic nature of ethanol leading to phase separation in blend.

Methanol fuel has attracted global attention from engine researchers since the crude oil crisis and the rise in crude oil prices in the recent years. As it is one of the possible alcoholic fuels after ethanol in an automotive application that can reduce dependence on crude oil. India has also initiated research studies on methanol since the 1980s. NITI Aayog is encouraging the use of methanol as an automotive fuel for transport sector. This desktop study includes the potentiality of methanol as an automotive fuel and the methanol roadmap for India as a biofuel in the conventional gasoline application. It has been seen that Methanol has the potential to be used as a fuel in automobiles to replace gasoline or crude oil-based fuels in terms of engine performance. According to a study, India’s methanol promotion measures will encourage more enterprises to invest in the research and construction of methanol producing plants and development of methanol-fueled engines.