Abstract
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in replacing petroleum fuels with so-called second generation environmental friendly fuels. Compared to traditional petroleum fuels dimethyl ether (DME) could be used as a clean high-efficiency compression ignition fuel with reduced particulate matter (PM), sulfur oxides (SOx), hydrocarbons (HC), carbon monoxide (CO) as well as combustion noise. Compared to some of the other leading alternative fuel candidates i.e., methane, methanol, ethanol, compressed natural gas, DME appears to have the largest potential impact on society including well-to-wheel greenhouse gas emissions, non-petroleum feedstocks, well-to-wheel efficiencies, fuel versatility, infrastructure, availability, economics, and safety and should be considered as the fuel of choice for eliminating the dependency on petroleum. This paper reviews the properties and the DME combustion effects on environmental and they were compared to diesel characteristic as well as the effect of blending DME with liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), conventional diesel fuel and biodiesel were discussed.
Highlights
Nowadays, internal combustion engines are one of the main source of environmental pollution
International Maritime Organization (IMO) expects that nitrogen oxides (NOx) and particulate matter (PM2.5) emissions from ships will amount to 2.1 million tons a year and 170,000 tons a year respectively [3]
The US Environmental Pollution Administration (EPA) demonstrated that the air pollutants from maritime shipping are transported over long distances which contributes to the deterioration of air quality in much larger areas even hundreds of miles Island [3]
Summary
Internal combustion engines are one of the main source of environmental pollution. The combustion of the most popular petroleum fuels causes the emission of other dangerous pollutants, i.e. carbon oxide (CO), sulfur oxides (SOx) and hydrocarbons (HC) [4]. These emissions harm human as well as animal populations. Most petroleum-derived fuels including mainly marine fuel oil, marine diesel oil, marine gasoline oil, and, recently, liquefied natural gas are used in both international and domestic maritime transport. Dimethyl ether offers excellent promise as an environmentally friendly fuel with lower CO, HC, NOx emission and almost smoke-free combustion and it may lessen the destruction of the ozone layer and global warming because of characteristics of good resolvability in the atmosphere
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