Use of Soybean Oil like as Fuel for Diesel Cycle Engine

Abstract

Diesel fuel price is rapidly increasing burdening the agricultural production costs. Additionally, diesel is contributing to a significant amount of life cycle greenhouse gases emissions. Strategically, using agricultural feedstock, such as soybean oil, will reduce fossil fuel price volatility and carbon footprint from agriculture. Although cheaper than biodiesel, use of pure soybean oil has shown to damage a regular diesel engine because of its high viscosity. In this work, a novel technology was developed and tested to overcome this problem by fueling a direct injection Diesel engine with refined soybean oil (edible oil) heated by engine coolant and exhaust gases. Thermal efficiency, air/fuel ratio, fuel injection timing, exhaust temperature and exhaust emissions were evaluated. The major finding of this study was to identify the feasibility of running a modified engine properly with heated soybean oil. The results showed that soybean oil use reduces emissions of nitrogen oxides, but contributes both to lower thermal efficiency and higher emissions of other products such as carbon monoxide and particulate matter compared to fossil diesel. Despite these negative results, solutions to reduce pollutant emissions are feasible.