Quantitative Evaluation of the Emissions of a Transport Engine Operating with Diesel-Biodiesel

Abstract

The present work is about evaluating the emission characteristics of biodiesel-diesel blends in a reciprocating engine. The biodiesel was produced and characterized before the test. A virtual instrument was developed to evaluate the velocity, fuel consumption, temperature, and emissions of O2, CO, SO2, and NO from an ignition-compression engine of four cylinders with a constant rate of 850 rpm. The percentages of soybean-biodiesel (B) blended with Mexican-diesel (D) analyzed were 2% B-98% D (B2), 5% B-95% B (B5), and 20% B-80% D (B20). The biodiesel was obtained through a transesterification process and was characterized using Fourier-Transform Infrared spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy. Our results indicate that CO emission is 6%, 10%, and 18% lower for B2, B5, and B20, respectively, in comparison with 100% (D100). The O2 emission is 12% greater in B20 than D100. A reduction of 3% NO and 2.6% SO2 was found in comparison to D100. The obtained results show 44.9 kJ/g of diesel’s lower heating value, this result which is 13% less than the biodiesel value, 2.8% less than B20, 1.3% than B5, and practically the same as B2. The specific viscosity stands out with 0.024 Poise for the B100 at 73 °C, which is 63% greater than D100. The infrared spectra show characteristics signals of esters groups (C-O) and the pronounced peak from the carbonyl group (C=O). It is observed that the increase in absorbance of the carbonyl group corresponds to an increase in biodiesel concentration.

Keywords

• virtual instrument
• LabVIEW
• characterization
• diesel-biodiesel
• emissions
• infrared spectra