Sunflower oil as fuel in a diesel engine

Abstract

This paper on the use of sunflower oil as fuel in a diesel engine is from the proceedings of 14th international Conference on Urban Transport and the Environment in the 21st Century, which was held in Malta in 2008. An introductory section of the paper discusses the advantages of biomass and bio-diesel. The authors describe research on the use of diesel-sunflower oil mixtures in diesel engines, including: diesel-10%sunflower oil (H10), diesel-20% sunflower oil (H20), diesel-30% sunflower oil (H30), diesel-40% sunflower oil (H40), and diesel-50% sunflower oil (H50). They measure the gas emissions of carbon monoxide (CO), hydrocarbons (HC) and nitrogen monoxide (NO), as well as fuel consumption. The study found that the diesel-sunflower oil mixtures (excluding H10%) present lower HC emissions compared to diesel. When the engine is turning at lower rpms, diesel appears to have greater NO emissions than the diesel-sunflower mixtures. The situation is reversed when the engine is working at higher rpms. The H10 and H20 mixtures produce less smoke emissions than diesel. The power of the engine and the fuel consumption were not found to be influenced by the different mixtures.