The potential of using vegetable oil fuels as fuel for diesel engines

Abstract

Vegetable oils are produced from numerous oil seed crops. While all vegetable oils have high energy content, most require some processing to assure safe use in internal combustion engines. Some of these oils already have been evaluated as substitutes for diesel fuels. The effects of vegetable oil fuels and their methyl esters (raw sunflower oil, raw cottonseed oil, raw soybean oil and their methyl esters, refined corn oil, distilled opium poppy oil and refined rapeseed oil) on a direct injected, four stroke, single cylinder diesel engine performance and exhaust emissions was investigated in this paper. The results show that from the performance viewpoint, both vegetable oils and their esters are promising alternatives as fuel for diesel engines. Because of their high viscosity, drying with time and thickening in cold conditions, vegetable oil fuels still have problems, such as flow, atomization and heavy particulate emissions.