Investigating the atomic and thermal performance of soy biodiesel methyl ester in the presence of hybrid CuO/Al2O3 nanoparticles by molecular dynamics simulation

Abstract

Considering the increase in using the biodiesels in the fuel industry, and the need to study its effect on the combustion processes, and the formation of greenhouse gases, the thermal performance of methyl ester-biodiesel fuel was studied in the present paper. The present study was carried out by molecular dynamics method. Furthermore, the effect of hybridaluminiumoxide/copper oxide nanoparticles on this biodiesel fluid's thermal performance and combustion processes was studied. Soy methyl ester was utilized as the study's base fluid. The poiseuille flow in the simulation box was shown by the fluid atomic behavior. Heat flux and the thermal conductivity of methyl ester converged to 1107.56 W/m2 and 0.1412 W/m.K, according to the base fluid's thermal efficiency. The findings demonstrate that the base fluid's thermal efficiency is improved by the addition of NPs. The heat flux and thermal conductivity of the nanostructure thus reach 2860 W/m2 and 0.6020 W/m.K. by adding hybrid NPs to the base fluid. Finally, the combustion processes in nanofluid is studied with the penetrated oxygen atoms number in the nanoparticles, and the radial distribution function (RDF). The results show that 25 oxygen atoms penetrated hybrid nanoparticles after 10 ns. Moreover, the maximum value of RDF increased by changing the time step from initial to final. The increase in the RDF showed the probability of finding oxygen atoms inside the hybrid nanoparticles.