• Journal of ILASS-Korea
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.155-166
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• 2014

This review will be concentrated on the spray characteristics of bioethanol and its derived fuels such as ethanol-diesel, ethanol-biodiesel in compression ignition (CI) engines. The difficulty in meeting the severe limitations on NOx and PM emissions in CI engines has brought about many methods for the application of ethanol because ethanol diffusion flames in engine produce virtually no soot. The most popular method for the application of ethanol as a fuel in CI engines is the blending of ethanol with diesel. The physical properties of ethanol and its derivatives related to spray characteristics such as viscosity, density and surface tension are discussed. Viscosity and density of e-diesel and e-biodiesel generally are decreased with increase in ethanol content and temperature. More than 22% and 30% of ethanol addition would not satisfied the requirement of viscosity and density in EN 590, respectively. Investigation of neat ethanol sprays in CI engines was conducted by very few researchers. The effect of ambient temperature on liquid phase penetration is a controversial topic due to the opposite result between two studies. More researches are required for the spray characteristics of neat ethanol in CI engines. The ethanol blended fuels in CI engines can be classified into ethanol-diesel blend (e-diesel) and ethanol-biodiesel (e-biodiesel) blend. Even though dodecanol and n-butanol are rarely used, the addition of biodiesel as blend stabilizer is the prevailing method because it has the advantage of increasing the biofuel concentration in diesel fuel. Spray penetration and SMD of e-diesel and e-biodiesel decrease with increase in ethanol concentration, and in ambient pressure. However, spray angle is increased with increase in the ethanol percentage in e-diesel. As the ambient pressure increases, liquid phase penetration was decreased, but spray angle was increased in e-diesel. The increase in ambient temperature showed the slight effect on liquid phase penetration, but spray angle was decreased. A numerical study of micro-explosion concluded that the optimum composition of e-diesel binary mixture for micro-explosion was approximately E50D50, while that of e-biodiesel binary mixture was E30B70 due to the lower volatility of biodiesel. Adding less volatile biodiesel into the ternary mixture of ethanol-biodiesel-diesel can remarkably enhance micro-explosion. Addition of ethanol up to 20% in e-biodiesel showed no effect on spray penetration. However, increase of nozzle orifice diameter results in increase of spray penetration. The more study on liquid phase penetration and SMD in e-diesel and e-biodiesel is required.

• Journal of ILASS-Korea
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.150-156
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• 2010

Ethanol has properties of a lower setting point, higher oxygen contents, lower cetane numbers, and also higher volatility compared to biodiesel. Thus, biodiesel fuel can be improved in the fluidity of blending fuel and exhaust emissions by blended ethanol fuel. This research aims to understand combustion characteristics of biodiesel-ethanol blending fuel inside a constant volume chamber. High speed camera was applied to visualize the physics of development of combustion processes, and combustion pressure and exhaust emissions were measured at several blending ratios of ethanol and biodiesel fuel. This information may contribute to improve the performance of biodiesel engine and reduce emissions in future.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.1-7
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• 2009

Ethanol has properties of a lower setting point, higher oxygen contents, lower cetane numbers, and also higher volatility compared to biodiesel. Thus, biodiesel fuel can be improved in the fluidity of and exhaust emissions by blended ethanol fuel. This research aims to understand combustion characteristics of biodiesel-ethanol blending fuel inside a constant volume chamber by obtaining some fundamental data in order to improve combustion atmosphere. To understand the physics of combustion, high speed camera was applied to visualize the development of combustion processes, and combustion pressure and exhaust emission were measured at several blending ratios of ethanol and biodiesel fuel. This information may contribute to improve the performance of biodiesel engine and reduce emissions in future.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.61-66
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• 2009

An experimental investigation was conducted to analyze the effects of biodiesel-ethanol and biodiesel-diesel blended fuels on the characteristics of combustion and exhaust emissions, and size distributions of particulate matter in a single cylinder diesel engine. The three types of test fuel were biodiesel and two blended fuels which were added ethanol and diesel by 20 % volume based fraction into biodiesel, respectively. In this study, the injection rate, combustion pressure, exhaust emissions and size distributions of particulate matter were measured under various injection timings and injection pressures. The experimental results show that biodiesel-ethanol blended fuel has lengthened ignition delay and low combustion pressure in comparison with those of biodiesel and biodiesel-diesel blended fuel even if all fuels indicated similar trends of injection rate under equal injection pressures. In addition, the ethanol blended fuel significantly reduced nitrogen oxidies (NOx) and soot emissions. And then the size distribution of particulate matters shows that blended fuels restrain the formation of particles which were beyond the range of 150nm comparison with biodiesel fuel.

• Journal of ILASS-Korea
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.180-186
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• 2008

The aim of this work is to investigate the effect of ambient conditions on the spray behavior of biodiesel-ethanol blended fuels. In order to analyze the spray behavior, spray tip penetration and spray cone angle were obtained from the visualization system and the effects of ethanol blending are compared macroscopic characteristics with the numerical results. It was reveled that the ethanol contents in biodiesel-ethanol blended fuels affect the spray tip penetration a little and increased the spray cone angle. Increased ambient pressure induced the decrease of the spray tip penetration, and the increased ambient temperature lead to the increase of the spray tip penetration. In addition, the increased ambient temperature promoted the vaporization and atomization of spray with the effect of increasing ethanol fuel.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.515-519
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• 2014

The fuel properties of biodiesel produced by changing the mixing ratio of methanol and ethanol in trans-esterification of soybean oil and lard were evaluated in this paper. The solubility of oil and fat in ethanol was higher than that in methanol. Also the more homogeneous biodiesel was produced as increasing the mole ratio of ethanol. The conversion characteristics of lard was the best at the mixing mole ratio of methanol and ethanol was 6 : 6 at the reaction temperature of $60^{\circ}C$. On the other hands, the best biodiesel conversion characteristics for soybean oil was obtained at the mixing mole ratio of 3 : 3. The kinematic viscosities of soybean oil and lard based biodiesel were 4.17~4.35 cSt and 4.69~4.93 cSt, respectively. The oxidation stability and higher heating value increased with increasing the mole ratio of ethanol. The oxidation stability satisfied the criteria of biodiesel quality of 6 hours. And finally, the higher heating value was approximately 40 MJ/kg.

• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.92-97
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• 2010

Many kinds of alternative fuels such as biodiesel, ethanol, methanol, and natural gas have been developed in order to overcome the limited deposits in fossil fuels. In some cases, the alternative fuels have been reported to cause degrade materials. The corrosion rates of metals were measured by immersion test, a kind of time consuming test because low conductivity of these fuels was not allowed to employ electrochemical tests. With twin two-electrode cell newly designed for the study, however, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) test was successfully applied to evaluation of the corrosion resistance ($R_p$) of zinc, iron, aluminum, and its alloys in an oxidized biodiesel and gasoline/ethanol solutions and the corrosion resistance from EIS was compared with the corrosion rate from immersion test. In biodiesel, $R_p$ increased in the order of zinc, iron, and aluminum, which agreed with the corrosion resistance measured from immersion test. In addition, on aluminum showing the best corrosion resistance ($R_p$), the effect of magnesium as an alloying element was evaluated in gasoline/ethanol solutions as well as the oxidized biodiesel. $R_p$ increased with addition of magnesium in gasoline/ethanol solutions containing chloride and the oxidized biodiesel. In the mean while, in gasoline/ethanol solutions containing formic acid, Al-Mg alloy added 1% magnesium had the highest $R_p$ and the further addition of magnesium decreased $R_p$. It can be explained with the fact that the addition of more than 1% magnesium increases the passive current density of Al-Mg alloys.

• Journal of Power System Engineering
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.5-12
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• 2008

We measured emission characteristics of CRDI diesel engine equipped with a commercial CPF. Experimental parameters adopted a neat diesel fuel, a blend of diesel fuel with 20% biodiesel, a blend of diesel fuel with 15% biodiesel and 5% ethanol. The experiments were carried out to measure the emission and engine performance according to ESC 13-mode cycles. The maximum torque with biodiesel blend fuel is slightly lower than that of neat diesel fuel in the entire the 13-mode cycles, and 5% ethanol and 15% biodiesel blend fuel is slightly higher than that of neat diesel fuel. THC and CO emissions of the biofuel blended diesel fuel were slightly increased and decreased, and mean conversion efficiencies of THC and CO on the commercial CPF were achieved about 70$\sim$87% in the ESC 13-mode. From the measurement by the Scanning Mobility Particle Sizer(SMPS), the total number and mass of nano-sized particles by a commercial CPF were decreased about 97.8% and 96.8 % in the range of the nano-size from 10.6 to 385nm, respectively.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.19 no.10
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• pp.1902-1909
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• 2005

A process for production of ethyl ester for use as biodiesel has been studied. The sodium hydroxide catalyzed transesterification of soybean oil with ethanol was carried out at different molar ratio of alcohol to oil, reaction temperature and catalyst amount for a constant agitation in two hours of reaction time. Central composite design and response surface methodology were used to determine optimum condition for producing biodiesel. It was found that ethanol to oil ratio and catalyst concentration have a positive influence on ester conversion as well as interaction effects between the three factors considered. An empirical model obtained was able to predict conversion as a function of ethanol to oil molar ratio, reaction temperature and catalyst concentration adequately. Optimum condition for soybean ethyl ester production was found to be moderate ethanol to oil ratio (10.5: 1), mild temperature range ($70^{\circ}C$) and high catalyst concentrations ($1.0\%$wt), with corresponding ester conversion of $93.0\%$.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.21 no.11
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• pp.1159-1165
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• 2011

Biodiesel is methyl and ethyl esters of long-chain fatty acids produced from vegetable oils or animal fats. Lipase enzymes have occasionally been used for the production of this biofuel. Recently, biodiesel production using immobilized lipase has received increased attention. Through enhanced stability and reusability, immobilized lipase can contribute to the reduction of the costs inherent to biodiesel production. In this study, methanol-tolerant lipase M37 from Photobacterium lipolyticum was immobilized using the cross-linked enzyme aggregate (CLEA) method. Lipase M37 has a high lysine content (9.7%) in its protein sequence. Most lysine residues are located evenly over the surface of the protein, except for the lid structure region, which makes the CLEA preparation yield quite high (~93%). CLEA M37 evidences an optimal temperature of $30^{\circ}C$, and an optimal pH of 9-10. It was stable up to $50^{\circ}C$ and in a pH range of 4.0-11.0. Both soluble M37 and CLEA M37 were stable in the presence of high concentrations of methanol, ethanol, 1-propanol, and n-butanol. That is, their activities were maintained at solvent concentrations above 10% (v/v). CLEA M37 could produce biodiesel from olive oil and alcohols such as methanol and ethanol. Additionally, CLEA M37 generated biodiesel via both 2-step methanol feeding procedures. Considering its physical stability and reusability, CLEA M37 may potentially be used as a catalyst in organic synthesis, including the biodiesel production reaction.