Fuel characterisation, engine performance, combustion and exhaust emissions with a new renewable Licella biofuel

Abstract

The current study investigates the opportunity of using Licella biofuel as a partly renewable fuel provided by Licella P/L. Hereafter this fuel will be referred to as Licella biofuel. The renewable component of the Licella biofuel was made from the hydrothermal conversion of Australian pinus radiata wood flour using Licella’s proprietary Cat-HTR™ technology. The diesel-soluble component of the hydrothermal product was extracted into road diesel to give a blended fuel containing approximately 30% renewable material with the balance from diesel. This was further blended with a regular diesel fuel (designated R0) to give fuels for testing containing 5%, 10% and 20% renewable fuel (designated R5, R10 and R20). Some of the key fuel properties were measured for R30 and compared with those of regular diesel fuel. The engine experiment was conducted on a four-cylinder turbocharged common rail direct injection diesel engine. All experiments were performed with a constant speed and five different engine loads. Exhaust emissions including particulate matter (PM) mass and numbers, nitric oxide (NO), total unburnt hydrocarbon (THC), carbon dioxide (CO2) and performance parameters including brake power (BP), indicated power (IP), brake mean effective pressure (BMEP), indicated mean effective pressure (IMEP), mechanical efficiency (ME), brake thermal efficiency (BTE) and brake specific energy consumption (BSEC) were investigated for all four blends (R0, R5, R10 and R20). Among other engine parameters, in-cylinder pressure, heat release rate (HRR) and pressure (P) versus volume (V) diagrams were also investigated for the four fuel blends.