Optimising the Composition of Biofuel Blends with Vegetable Oil Additives

Abstract

The paper deals with a topical issue of using biofuels in internal combustion engines. Promising biofuels may be derived from vegetable oils. In agriculture, using blends of petroleum fuel and a moderate amount of vegetable oil is economically feasible. We consider rapeseed oil and sunflower oil as these possible additives. We list physical and chemical properties of vegetable oils and blends of vegetable oils and diesel fuel. We analysed the experimental investigation results concerning the D-245.12S diesel engine running on petroleum fuel and its blends with vegetable oil additives specified above. We demonstrate that it is possible to improve environmental performance of a diesel by using these biofuel blends. We present a method for optimising the composition of petroleum fuel blends with vegetable oil additives that is based on determining a generalised optimality criterion as a sum of partial optimality criteria characterising regulated toxic component content in diesel exhaust gas emissions. We used the method presented to perform optimisation calculations and determine the optimum composition for biofuel blends with vegetable oil additives. We developed a method for estimating environmental safety of diesel power plants that takes into account the concentration of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the diesel exhaust gases. We show that knowing benzo[a]pyrene emission levels of a diesel running on a specific type of fuel is enough to estimate the degree of environmental threat of its exhaust gases