A Study on Utilization of High-Ratio Biodiesel and Pure Biodiesel in Advanced Vehicle Technologies

Abstract

An experimental study was conducted to investigate the effect of high-ratio biodiesel and pure biodiesel on the emissions and performance of Euro4-compliant vehicles. The tested fuels were diesel fuel, biodiesel with a ratio of 30% by volume (B30), biodiesel with a ratio of 50% (B50) and pure biodiesel FAME (B100), while the tested vehicle is of the Euro4-compliant standard currently available in the Indonesian market. In this study, tests on emissions, performance and fuel economy were conducted based on the international standard of the UN ECE R83-05, adopted as UN ECE R-85 and UN ECE R-101 respectively. This study also investigated the effect of the carbon-to-hydrogen ratio on the carbon balance formula. Here, the paper proposed a modified R101 carbon balance formula to calculate the fuel economy for high-ratio and pure biodiesel fuels. The results showed that biodiesel had lower CO, HC and particulate emissions, while NOx emissions were higher compared to diesel fuel. However, pure biodiesel was within the limits imposed by the Euro4 emissions standard. Maximum power output with high-ratio biodiesel decreased by up to 10% with B100. The fuel economy of the B30, B50 and B100 biodiesels was lower than diesel fuel by 3%, 7% and 11%, respectively, based on the modified carbon balance formula for high-ratio biodiesel fuel.