• Environmental Engineering Research
• /
• v.23 no.3
• /
• pp.242-249
• /
• 2018

The use of palm oil and diesel blended with ethanol, known as a microemulsion biofuel, is gaining attention as an attractive renewable fuel for engines that may serve as a replacement for fossil-based fuels. The microemulsion biofuels can be formulated from the mixture of palm oil and diesel as the oil phase; ethanol as the polar phase; methyl oleate as the surfactant; alkanols as the cosurfactants. This study investigates the influence of the three cosurfactants on fuel consumption and exhaust gas emissions in a direct-injection (DI) diesel engine. The microemulsion biofuels along with neat diesel fuel, palm oil-diesel blends, and biodiesel-diesel blends were tested in a DI diesel engine at two engine loads without engine modification. The formulated microemulsion biofuels increased fuel consumption and gradually reduced the nitrogen oxides ($NO_x$) emissions and exhaust gas temperature; however, there was no significant difference in their carbon monoxide (CO) emissions when compared to those of diesel. Varying the carbon chain length of the cosurfactant demonstrated that the octanol-microemulsion fuel emitted lower CO and $NO_x$ emissions than the butanol- and decanol-microemulsion fuels. Thus, the microemulsion biofuels demonstrated competitive advantages as potential fuels for diesel engines because they reduced exhaust emissions.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
• /
• v.22 no.5
• /
• pp.116-125
• /
• 2014

Pyrolysis oil (PO), derived from biomass through fast pyrolysis process have the potential to displace significant amounts of petroleum fuels. The PO derived from wood has been regarded as an alternative fuel to be used in diesel engines. However, the use of PO in a diesel engine is very limited due to its poor properties like low energy density, low cetane number, high acidity and high viscosity of PO. Therefore, one of the easiest way to adopt PO to diesel engine without modifications is blended with other fuels that have high centane number. However, PO that has high amount of polar chemicals is immiscible with non polar hydrocarbons of diesel or biodiesel. Thus, to stabilize a homogeneous phase of diesel/biodiesel-PO blends, a proper surfactant should be used. Nevertheless, PO which was produced from different biomass type have varied characteristics and this complicates the selection of a suitable additive for a specific PO-diesel emulsion. In this regard, a more simple approach such as the use of a co-solvent like ethanol or butanol to induce a more stable phase of the PO-diesel mixture could be a promising alternative. In this study, a diesel engine operated with diesel/biodiesel-PO-butanol blends was experimentally investigated. Performance and gaseous & particle emission characteristics of a diesel engine were examined under the engine loads of IMEP 0.2 ~ 0.8MPa.