Abstract
Utilising waste cooking oil biodiesel in internal combustion engines for power generation and transport is of increasing importance, as it is the least pollutant disposal method for waste cooking oil. Besides, researchers have recently shown an increasing interest in utilising graphene and its derivatives in different applications due to its unique thermal and physical characteristics, including enhancing the combustion characteristics of biofuels. Therefore, this article studies the characteristics of waste cooking oil biodiesel blended with few-layered graphene and graphite nanoparticles additives and their influence on combustion and engine emissions and benchmark them against neat biodiesel and diesel fuels. The biodiesel was synthesised through a transesterification method from waste cooking oil and blended with diesel or butanol after adding few-layered graphene and graphite nanoparticles. Few-layered graphene and graphite nanoparticle additives led to greater peak in-cylinder pressure by 0.5-2.5% increment and 1-4% lower heat released rate at full load. As such, employing few-layered graphene and graphite in a fuel mix reduced NOx emission by 0.7-5 % compared to 100% diesel counterpart. Besides, at full engine load, waste cooking biodiesel blended with 100 ppm few-layered graphene and graphite nanoparticles showed an increment in brake thermal efficiency by 8-10% compared to pure fossil diesel and waste cooking biodiesel. The results show the feasibility of using graphene-based nanoparticle additives in biodiesel to enhance biodiesel fuel combustion characteristics, hence lowering NOx emissions.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 125270 |
Journal | Fuel |
Volume | 328 |
Early online date | 14 Jul 2022 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 15 Nov 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding: British Council DST-UKIERI 18-19-04© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license
Keywords
- biodiesel
- combustion
- emissions
- graphene
- graphite
- nanoparticle