Study of combustion performance of biodiesel for potential application in motorsport

Abstract

The variability in viscosity and combustion quality has been identified from the literature as a barrier to the use of biodiesel fuels in motorsport. These parameters can affect performance, emissions and fuel consumption. Diesel engines have had recent success in endurance and touring car racing;biodiesel is an opportunity to increase the sustainability of this emerging area of motorsport.Methyl esters from rapeseed, soybean and sunflower oils were tested alongside EN 590 diesel fuel.Variations in fuel consumption, output torque and power were observed between the fuels. Further tests were carried out on an automotive diesel engine to evaluate the in-cylinder pressures for soybean B100, beef tallow B50 and EN 590 to gain understanding of the reasons behind the performance differences noted in the initial tests.Retarding the start of injection for B50 and B100 biodiesel improved the peak torque by up to 5% enabling the production of equal torque at the same engine speed when compared to EN 590 but with lower peak in-cylinder pressure and a shorter ignition delay. The application of this to motorsport is the potential to achieve higher peak power outputs; the shorter ignition delay and more rapid combustion has the potential to be used to raise the maximum engine speed and therefore the peak power output of diesel engines for motorsport.

Impact of fatty acid composition and physicochemical properties of Jatropha and Alexandrian laurel biodiesel blends: An analysis of performance and emission characteristics

“…On the other hand, PB10 and PB20 showed an average of 8% and 15% higher BSFC respectively than did B5 fuel. The higher BSFC of the biodiesel blend was attributed to the combined effects of fuel properties, such as viscosity, density, and HHV (Qi et al, 2010;Wood et al, 2015). Fuel consumption rate was calculated on a mass basis rather than a volume basis.…”

Review of Experimental and Computational Studies on Spray, Combustion, Performance, and Emission Characteristics of Biodiesel Fueled Engines

“…140 / 120801-13 reduction in peak cylinder pressure for B50 (Soybean biodiesel blend) in comparison to standard injection timing for mineral diesel, while 1 deg CA retardation in SoI for B100 resulted in negligible increase in torque and 4.4% reduction in peak cylinder pressure. Further, lower ignition delay in both blends resulted in lower peak cylinder pressures for the same engine load [134]. The in-line FIP increased with increasing percentage of biodiesel in test blend.…”

Effect of Biodiesel on the Performance and Emission Characteristics of Diesel Engines

“…In transesterification, the oil is converted chemically into its corresponding fatty ester [7]. E Duffy and J. Patrick conducted this test in 1853 and since then, lots of studies have been done on biodiesel till now using different oils like soybean oil [9,10], cotton seed [11][12][13][14], waste cooking oil [40], rapseed oil [14,16], Sunflower oil [14,17], Tyre pyrolysis oil [TPO] [18], Jatropha [7,10,[19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27] and many others. A study tells that there are around 300 different kinds of oil seeds, amongst which "Oleander", "Bitter Groundnut" and Kusune are the only vegetable oils which are considered to be a potential alternatives fuel for CI Engines [27].…”