Abstract
The interest in biofuels was stimulated by the fossil fuel depletion and global warming. This work focuses on the impact of biodiesel fuel on ethanol/diesel (ED) fuel blends. The soybean methyl ester was used as a representative composition of typical biodiesel fuels. The heating and evaporation of ethanol–biodiesel–diesel (EBD) blends were investigated using the Discrete–Component (DC) model. The Cetane Number (CN) of the EBD blends was predicted based on the individual hydrocarbon contributions in the mixture. The mixture viscosity was predicted using the Universal Quasi-Chemical Functional group Activity Coefficients and Viscosity (UNIFAC–VISCO) method, and the lower heating value of the mixture was predicted based on the volume fractions and density of species and blends. Results revealed that a mixture of up to 15% biodiesel, 5% ethanol, and 80% diesel fuels had led to small variations in droplet lifetime, CN, viscosity, and heating value of pure diesel, with less than 1.2%, 0.2%, 2%, and 2.2% reduction in those values, respectively.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 1804 |
| Number of pages | 11 |
| Journal | Energies |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue number | 9 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 12 May 2019 |
Bibliographical note
© 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Keywords
- Biodiesel
- Diesel
- Ethanol
- Combustion
- Thermodynamic properties
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Fluid Flow and Transfer Processes
- Chemical Engineering (miscellaneous)
- Fuel Technology
- Modelling and Simulation
- Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
- Automotive Engineering
- Aerospace Engineering
