On April 18, 2018, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the release of the Co-Optima FY2017 Year in Review.  The Co-Optima initiative is accelerating the introduction of efficient, clean, affordable, and scalable high-performance fuels by bringing together DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy (EERE), national laboratories, universities, and industry and government stakeholders to collaborate on improvements to biofuels and the development of new technologies.  This report covers significant accomplishments made by Co-Optima in fiscal year 2017 (FY17), including:

• Establishing an improved merit function that quantifies how fuel properties impact boosted spark ignition (SI) engine efficiency.
• Identifying representative blendstocks from five chemical families that provide the key fuel properties needed for high-efficiency SI engines.
• Screening a wide range of blendstocks to assess compatibility with vehicles and infrastructure.
• Determining relationships that describe how chemical structure impacts key fuel properties.
• Developing new numerical algorithms and computational tools that accelerate research and development (R&D).
• Completing integrated, systems-level analyses of blendstocks in relation to economic, technological, market, and environmental factors.

In addition to expounding upon these successes, the Co-Optima initiative report also outlines what impact they can have on U.S. industries. Utilizing these new efficient technologies could significantly reduce fuel costs for passenger and commercial vehicles by billions of dollars, maximize existing fuel infrastructure, and add hundreds of thousands of jobs to the U.S. economy.

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