Volume Basis Research Articles

An experimental investigation of a dual-fuel engine by using bio-fuel as the additive

To improve the performance and emission characteristics in the diesel/CNG dual-fuel combustion mode, bio-fuel of n-butanol as the additive in the pilot fuel was investigated by sweeping a wide range of CNG substitution rates. The experiments were conducted at fixed CA50s of 4.5 and 5.5 °CA ATDC for approximately 5 bar IMEP (low load) and 7.5 bar IMEP (medium load). At low load, the pilot fuel with n-butanol can shorten the combustion duration for each CNG substitution rate, and D90B10 (90% diesel/10% n-butanol by volume basis as the pilot fuel) can improve the indicated thermal efficiency (ITE) with the relatively high CNG substitution rates and reduce CO emission. D80B20 (80% diesel/20% n-butanol by volume basis as the pilot fuel) can reduce both the NOx and CO emissions simultaneously compared to pure diesel as the pilot fuel. At medium load, the pilot fuel with n-butanol can improve ITE with the relatively low CNG substitution rates. It can also reduce the CO emission but slightly increase the NOx emissions. It can be found that the THC emissions are more sensitive to the CNG substitution rate. In addition, the pilot fuel with n-butanol can reduce the CO2 emission at most CNG substitution rates.

Effect of hydrogen enrichment on combustion characteristics of methane swirling and non-swirling inverse diffusion flame

Influence of hydrogen addition on appearance of swirling and non-swirling inverse diffusion flame (IDF) along with emissions characteristics are investigated experimentally. The combustion characteristics including flame length, axial and radial temperature variation, and noise level are analysed for hydrogen addition in methane by mass basis for constant energy input and by volume basis for constant volumetric fuel flow rate. Hydrogen addition in methane IDF produces shorter flame by compressing entrainment zone, mixing zone, reaction zone, and post-combustion zone. Hydrogen addition shift these zones towards fuel and air exit from the burner. Enrichment of methane with hydrogen on a mass basis up to 6% reduces CO emission considerably and increases NOx emission moderately. Effect of H2 addition on combustion and emission characteristics is more prominent in non-swirling IDF. Combustion noise is augmented with the hydrogen addition and the magnitude of sound level depends on the hydrogen concentration.

Biofuel Production and Characterization from Waste Chicken Skin and Pig Fat

The biofuels are the most important alternative energy sources in future to fulfil the energy demands. The team of our students carried out an innovative process to convert waste to value-added products. The students have been visited many meat stalls and gathered the required amount of resources with and without cost. The collected waste chicken skin and pig tallow is heated and extracted fat, which is the primary sources to produce the biofuel. The fat extraction process was carried by shredding down the waste chicken skin and pig tallow. The obtained fat was filtered and heated up to 110ºC to remove all the impurities, water suspensions, blood cells and pieces of bones. The process called transesterification process was carried out to convert obtained fat into biofuel with methyl alcohol and KOH as a catalyst. Transesterification process carted with fat before acid wash and after acid wash to examine the effect of FFA on biofuel yield. The quantity of biofuel yield has been observed to be 62 to 68% for fat from waste chicken skin and 82 to 83 % for fat from pig tallow. The derived fuel from fat from both resources is combined with conventional diesel fuel to check the different properties on a volume basis varied by 10% up to 40%. The essential properties such as viscosity, density, flashpoint, fire point and calorific values were determined, and results show that the fuel combination CB20 and PB20 meets the all requirements of ASTM standards to fix as an additive fuel to CI engines. The clear biofuel from both the fat expressed higher viscosity, density, flash and fire point with a lesser value of energy density.

A Researchon Tribological Behaviourof Pongamia Biodiesel Blended Lubricant with Cardanol Biodiesel Blended Lubricant at Different Loads

In this world demand for bio lubricants which are easily decomposing, non-toxic and non-polluting is increasing day by day. This paper describes and compares the friction and wear characteristics of Pongamia blended lubricant with Cardanol blended lubricant by using Pin on disc wear testing Tribometer. For the preparation of blended lubricants, cardanol and pongamia based biodiesel were blended with base lubricant SAE20W40 in the ratios of 5, 10, and 20% on volume basis. The friction and wear characteristics of Cardanol and pongamia blended bio lubricants were carried out at the loads of 50N, 100N and 150N with the sliding velocity of 2.5m/s. By adding 5% and 10% pongamia biodiesel with base lubricant, less wear rate was observed. When this limit wear rate exceeds is also increasing gradually. While carrying out the wear test with Cardanol oil blended lubricant, least wear rate was observed during the addition of 5% and 20% Cardanol oil blended lubricant with base lubricant. The wear rate was increased while adding 10% of Cardanol oil blended lubricant with base lubricant. It has been concluded that CBL 5 and CBL 15 can act as an alternative lubricant at minimum and maximum load to increase mechanical efficiency at 2.5m/s sliding velocity and dependency on petroleum-based products was reduced with its contribution

An integrated effort of medium reactivity fuel, in-cylinder, and after-treatment strategies to demonstrate potential reduction in challenging emissions of reactivity controlled compression ignition combustion

Previous studies on reactivity controlled compression ignition combustion indicated that, reducing the hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide emissions at low load conditions still remains a challenge because of lower in-cylinder temperatures due to lower global reactivity gradient and reduced oxidation process. Research in this direction has not been reported so far and with this motivation, an attempt has been made to increase the global reactivity gradient and oxidation of fuel–air mixture by converting the low reactivity fuel methanol into medium reactivity fuel. This is achieved by mixing high octane oxygenated fuel, methanol (Octane Number: 110), with an oxygenated better cetane and volatility fuels like polyoxymethylene dimethyl ether (Cetane Number: 78) and isobutanol (Cetane Number: 15). The medium reactivity fuel with multiple direct injection of diesel fuel timed the combustion of dual fuel–air mixture to avoid too late or too advanced combustion which are the prime factors in controlling the unburnt emissions in a low temperature combustion process. Four medium reactivity fuel samples, M80IB20, M60IB40, M90P10, and M80P20, on percentage volume basis have been prepared and tested on the modified on-road three-cylinder turbocharged common rail direct injection diesel engine to demonstrate higher indicated thermal efficiency and potential reduction in unburnt and oxides of nitrogen/particulate matter emissions from reactivity controlled compression ignition combustion. Experimental results show that, use of medium reactivity fuel with optimized diesel injection strategy resulted in 66% decrease in hydrocarbon emission and 74% decrease in carbon monoxide emission by enhancing the oxidation of fuel–air mixture at lower temperatures which is evidently noticed in the combustion characteristics. Further reduction in hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide emission of about 90% has been achieved by integrating the diesel oxidation catalyst with the engine.

Effect of n-butanol/diesel blends on performance, emission, noise and vibration characteristics of a diesel engine generator

Simple diesel engine generators in general are noisy and pollute air. It is urgently needed to find alternative fuels applicable for new as well as old engines without structural modifications and along with keeping the environment clean. Diesel-alcohol blends could be such alternatives fuels. For that purpose, in this study tests were carried out using diesel fuel first then, were carried out using three of n-butanol/diesel blends on volume bases with n-butanol concentrations of 5, 10 and 15%, identified as nBu5, nBu10 and nBu15. The engine under study is a single cylinder, four stroke, air cooled diesel engine generator and the tests have been carried out at a fixed 3000 rpm and five different load conditions without any hardware modifications. Total noise, engine block vibration, NOx, HC, CO, BSFC, BTE and EGT have been observed of diesel and n-butanol/diesel blends. The following conclusions can be drawn with nbutanol/ diesel fuel blends against diesel fuel; (i) According to engine performance test results; a little higher specific fuel consumption was observed with corresponding slight increase of brake thermal efficiency and little lower exhaust gas temperatures. (ii) According to engine emission test results; the NOx was slightly reduced, this reduction being higher the higher the percentage of butanol in the blend. The CO emissions were reduced, on the contrary, HC emissions were increased, this increase being higher the higher the percentage of butanol in the blend. According to engine vibration and noise test results; Noise and vibration characteristics are somewhat better especially at lesser loads.

Nitrogen Mineralization in Mississippi River Deltaic Plain Freshwater Floating Marshes

ABSTRACTThe mineralization of soil organic nitrogen in two floating marshes types in Louisiana, USA with different vegetation and mat thickness (and biomass) was measured by incubating peat soil in situ in polyethylene bottles at depths of 10 and 25 cm. The size of the extractable inorganic N (NH4+ – N) pool was related to mat thickness and soil bulk density. The N mineralization rates were twice as great at the thick mat site (1.5 mg N/kg soil/day) compared to the thin mat floating marsh (0.71 mg N/kg soil/day). The amount mineralized on a volume basis to 30 cm depth were 22 mg N/m2/day for the thick mat marsh and 6 mg N/m2/day for the thin mat marsh. The nitrogen mineralization rates observed in this study reflect plant biomass differences between the thick mat and thin mat marshes, with the former exhibiting approximately 7-fold greater biomass. These low overall mineralization rates suggest that nitrogen entering these freshwater floating marshes from Mississippi River water percolating through the root zone, would result in increased plant productivity-increasing marsh stability and also providing a natural mechanism contributing to the processing and removal of dissolved inorganic nitrogen in river water entering these wetlands.

A detailed experimental analysis of air–steam gasification in a dual fired downdraft biomass gasifier enabling hydrogen enrichment in the producer gas

The use of ambient air as an oxidizing agent in the biomass gasification process is well understood. Ambient air contains 79% nitrogen (N2) and 21% Oxygen (O2) by volume. Consequently, producer gas generated through air gasification comprises of non-combustible gases around 62% (on a volume basis). As a result, the heating value of the producer gas is low, which results in low adiabatic flame temperature (AFT), low AFT results in reduced efficiency and higher specific fuel consumption (SFC) when the producer gas (PG) is used in internal combustion (IC) engines. This study is focused on the reduction of the non-combustible fraction in producer gas, thereby to increase the heating value of the producer gas through the air- steam gasification. The results of the experimental study are presented in details. A detailed mass and energy balance analysis conducted. A maximum of 27.24% (by volume) hydrogen achieved at equivalence number (EN) 1.54 suitable for bio-hydrogen production. Whereas EN 1.5–2.2 is more suitable for power generation applications since maximum higher heating value (HHV) occurs in this range, i.e., 6.33 MJ Nm−3. The enrichment of producer gas resulted in an increase of HHV by 44%. The cold gas efficiency is 86–87%.

Comparative study of pilot fuel property and intake air boost on combustion and performance in the CNG dual-fuel engine

As the pilot fuel property and equivalence ratio of the mixture exhibit significant effect on the combustion and emission characteristics in the dual-fuel operation mode with compressed natural gas (CNG), in this work, bio-fuel of n-butanol as the additive in diesel in conjunction with boost air intake pressure (Pin) was studied at indicated mean effective pressure (IMEP) of 10 bar. Various n-butanol blending ratios in the pilot fuel of B0 (pure diesel as the pilot fuel), B10 (90% diesel/10% n-butanol by volume basis as the pilot fuel), B20 and B30 were compared at Pin from 1.1 to 1.5 bar under two CNG substitution rates of 50% (CNG50) and 70% (CNG70). The experimental results revealed that for the increasing n-butanol content and decreasing Pin, the ignition delay is prolonged, and combustion duration becomes shorter. While CA50 is advanced with diesel/n-butanol as the pilot fuel at relatively higher Pin, e.g. 1.4 and 1.5 bar. Compared to CNG70, CNG50 can enhanced the indicated thermal efficiency (ITE), but also inducing higher maximum pressure rising rate (MPRR). Adding n-butanol can further improve ITE at 50% CNG relatively to pure diesel. For the emission characteristics, the THC and CO emissions can be reduced by adding n-butanol in the pilot fuel due to more homogeneous distribution of pilot fuel. However, much higher n-butanol content, such as B20 and B30, could lead to higher NOx emission. In addition, it is interesting to find that B10CNG50 can improve ITE, NOx, THC and CO simultaneously compared to B0CNG50 at relatively higher Pin.

Numerical Investigation on Performance and Emission Characteristics of a Diesel Engine Fired With Methanol Blended Diesel Fuel

The effects of methanol and oleic acid blended diesel fuel on the performance and emissions of the diesel engine are evaluated numerically by commercial software Diesel-RK to simulate a single cylinder, naturally aspirated, direct injection, four-stroke diesel engine. The present study also resolves the problem of the immiscibility of methanol in diesel fuel, as to avoid immiscible nature an optimum percentage of oleic acid and n-butanol is added to make blends stable. The methanol blended diesel fuels are 7%, 12%, and 17% methanol in volume basis (D85M7NB1O7, D75M12NB1O12, and D65M17NB1O17). A drastic reduction in NOx emission is observed due to low combustion temperature however the PM emissions increases which can be controlled by using exhaust after-treatment techniques. The results indicate that: the brake specific fuel consumption increases and brake thermal efficiency decreases with an increase of methanol, oleic acid and n-butanol contents in the blended fuel whereas maximum heat release rate increases and exhaust temperature decreases.

Understanding of temperature and cooling effectiveness sensitivity of a film-cooled vane under coolant inlet temperature effect: A case study

This work presents a case study of the relationship between temperature and cooling effectiveness of a film-cooled vane under effect of coolant inlet temperature in two aspects based on the actual and base coolant inlet temperatures. Results are conducted in terms of temperature, cooling effectiveness, and heat transfer coefficient based on surface and volume analyses using CFD/CHT approach. Sensitivity of the vane temperature and cooling effectiveness under this effect is discussed also. The results show that for the surface basis, although the cooling effectiveness obtained from the actual coolant inlet temperature is quite straightforward and follows the definition of the cooling effectiveness directly, the cooling effectiveness obtained from the base coolant inlet temperature is more understandable because it corresponds to the variation of the surface temperature. Based on the volume basis and the base coolant inlet temperature, the 8% increase in the coolant inlet temperature causes the reduction of the average and maximum cooling effectiveness, which corresponds to 18 K and 25 K increments in the average and minimum temperatures, respectively. However, when the actual coolant inlet temperature is used, the variation of the cooling effectiveness is rather insensitive due to the reduction of heat flux on the hot-side wall.

Effect of plastic oil-methanol blends operated on petrol engine performance and exhaust emissions

ABSTRACT Energy is becoming a vital and crucial parameter in many technical, commercial and self-development sectors of an individualistic in any countries. In this context, fossil fuels are devaluing and their costs are rising and hovering. While generating energy from the existing fossil fuels is not alone economically infeasible but also provoke many sensitive environmental issues. Along with emissions from automobile sector, one of other culprits in ecosystem is disposal of waste plastics. To meet the acute energy needs with eco-balance is utilising plastic oil as functional fuel to run the engines. This research paper presents the experimental investigations on multi-cylinder petrol engine operating with 10% and 20% of plastic pyrolysis oil with and without methanol additive at 5% volume basis blended with petrol. The experimental results observed that the engine brake thermal efficiency was improved 7.9%, 18.6% and HC emissions were 25.31%, 5.6% controlled with the 20PPO5M compared to petrol fuel and 20PPO fuel operated at full load conditions.

A novel vacuumed hermetic reactor and its application in coal pyrolysis

A novel vacuumed hermetic (VH) reactor is designed and compared with the common Gray-King (GK) and flow-through (FT) reactors for lignite pyrolysis under different operation modes. The quantity and quality analyses of pyrolysis products, such as char, tar and its fractions, water and gas show that the VH reactor with pre-evacuation (PE) by a pump and cooling of volatiles by liquid nitrogen (VH-PE-77 K) greatly reduces the volatiles reaction time and collects all of products, and the pyrolysis results are closer to the coal-to-volatiles reaction (or the so called primary pyrolysis) than other reactors commonly used in the literature. Compared with the yields of VH-PE-77 K in the temperature ranges from 50 °C to 500, 550 and 600 °C, the GK reactor allows more volatiles reaction (or the so called secondary reaction) and generally yields about 10% less tar, 7% less water, 3% more char and 10% more gas. It is found that the volatiles reaction contributes little to CO2 yield but significantly to H2, CH4 and CO yields. The water generated from coal-to-volatiles reaction participated in the volatiles reaction. The volatiles reaction reduces the chars’ surface area and the higher heating value (HHV) of gas (on volume basis), but increases the chars’ HHV (on mass basis).

Oxidative potential of particles at a research house: Influencing factors and comparison with outdoor particles

The oxidative potential (OP) of particles can be represented by the ability of particles to generate hydroxyl radicals in an aqueous solution which can be measured with electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectrometry. The oxidative potential of particles may be a more health-relevant metric than other physicochemical properties of particles. While OPEPR has been measured in several outdoor locations, it remains largely unstudied in indoor environments. Total suspended particle samples were collected at an unoccupied research house in eighteen four-day sampling events. The OPEPR of indoor particles was found to be 59% ± 30% of the OPEPR of outdoor particles on a sampling volume basis during normal indoor conditions in eight sampling events. However, OPEPR per particle mass was 3.5 ± 0.62 times higher indoors than outdoors, indicating that reactions taking place indoors likely increase OPEPR of indoor particles. In ten sampling events, indoor temperature, relative humidity (RH), air change rate (λ), and cooking activities were varied. OPEPR of indoor particles was found to be significantly influenced (in order of importance) by indoor RH, λ, and temperature. OPEPR of indoor particles was higher than OPEPR for outdoor particles when indoor RH and λ were increased. The presence of cooking activities did not appear to consistently increase OPEPR of indoor particles.

Performance evaluation of alkali activated mortar containing high volume of waste brick powder blended with ground granulated blast furnace slag cured at ambient temperature

Brick and ceramic wastes are becoming one of the most abundantly generated construction and demolition waste (CDWs). However, the practice of utilizing high volume brick and ceramic waste as a precursor and fine aggregate materials in alkali-activated mortar has not yet been exhaustively studied. The main purpose of this research was to analyze the possibility of recycling brick and ceramic wastes as a precursor and fine aggregate in high volume basis in the development of alkali-activated brick and ceramic mortar (AABCM) under ambient temperature. In this respect, waste brick powder (WBP) and waste ceramic sand (WCS) were used as a precursor and fine aggregate, respectively, and ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) was used to replace WBP in a range of 0–50% at increments of 10% by volume. The AABCM samples were prepared and cured at an ambient temperature for 3, 7, 28, and 56 days: the compressive strength measured in the range of 24–93 MPa and ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV) values were between 3112 and 4086 m/s indicating AABCM samples were in good condition; both showed improvement when the proportion of GGBFS was increased. The results of this study reveal the strong potential of using brick and ceramics as precursor and fine aggregate materials on a high-volume basis to produce AABCM under ambient temperature conditions.

Quick Degradation Detection on Biogas-Fuelled SOFCs

In order to make SOFCs CHP units a promising alternative to ICEs, the impact of biogas cleaning and pre-processing on the system complexity and costs must be reasonable. While cleaning is strongly needed, biogas pre-reforming might be avoided. To this end, this paper investigates the behavior of commercial planar anode-supported NiYSZ/YSZ/LSCF cell, operated at 800°C and fed with a simulated biogas (CH4 55%, CO2 35%, N2 10% on a dry volume basis), aiming at demonstrating the operability of the current SOFC technology in small-scale biogas plants. A detailed Impedance analysis and SOFC material characterization by SEM and EDX reveal a slight performance degradation after 120 hours exposure to simulated clean biogas.

Impact of addition of two ether additives with high speed diesel- Calophyllum Inophyllum biodiesel blends on NOx reduction in CI engine

The objective of this work was to compare the effect of diethyl ether (DEE) and methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE) addition to biodiesel and diesel blends on diesel engine. The ethers concentration have been varied in proportion of 5% and 10% on volume basis with biodiesel by keeping the diesel concentration as 50% for all ternary blends preparation. Experimental results revealed that D50-B45-DEE5 ternary blend has shown 5.3% increase in thermal efficiency compared to other ternary blends. On the other hand, D50-B45-MTBE5 and D50-B45-DEE ternary blends have reduced CO emission by 8.1% and 14.8% respectively when compared to high speed diesel fuel. Furthermore, the D50-B40-DEE10 blend and D50-B40-MTBE10 reduce the NOx emission by 32% and 8.8% when compared to HSD at maximum load condition. Significant reduction is noted in HC emission for all ether added ternary blends than that of HSD and biodiesel fuels. However, the smoke emission is decreased marginally for D50-B45-DEE5 than that of HSD fuel. Finally, it is evident that both the DEE and MTBE could be used as viable additive with diesel or biodiesel in binary and ternary forms for diesel engine applications.

Two-dimensional surface models to predict the density of biodiesel-diesel-alcohol ternary blends

ABSTRACT Biodiesel, defined as mono-alkyl esters of triglycerides, has drawn considerable attention in recent years as a clean and renewable fuel. Density is one of the important properties of biodiesel that strongly affects spray characteristics, fuel atomization, and combustion. Although there exists a number of studies in which some important fuel properties (density, viscosity, flash point, heating value, critical properties, cloud point, latent heat of vaporization, etc.) of pure biodiesels, and biodiesel-diesel fuel blends are investigated at different temperatures, and one-dimensional models are proposed to predict their fuel properties, the comprehensive studies involving (i) the measurement of densities of biodiesel-diesel-alcohol (especially higher alcohols) ternary blends, which have been utilized in diesel engines to improve exhaust emissions (especially NOx-smoke trade-off), under varying temperature and blending ratio of alcohol, and (ii) development of two-dimensional regression models to predict densities of ternary blends have not been performed so far. Therefore, in this study, for eliminating the lack of such studies mentioned above items (i and ii) in the existing literature, waste-cooking oil ethyl ester was synthesized and mixed with commercially available diesel fuel on 20 volume basis. Several alcohols were added to the resulting biodiesel-diesel fuel blend (B20) for preparing ternary blends. The densities of ternary blends were measured at various temperatures. Based on the experimental data, some two-dimensional models were first proposed to quick estimate blend density for a given temperature and alcohol blending ratio. The models were tested against different density data of used cooking oil methyl ester-diesel-bioethanol ternary blends previously reported in the literature. Graphic representations of density as a simultaneous function of temperature and blending ratio in three-dimensional plots were firstly given in the literature. Finally, the variations in constant density lines showing different gradient regions were also firstly given. According to the authors’ knowledge, the novelties of this study are the derivation of two-dimensional models and investigation of changes of constant density lines for ternary blends including biodiesel, diesel, and various alcohols.

3D printed microstructured Au/TiO2 catalyst for hydrogen photoproduction

We successfully 3D printed Au/TiO2 monoliths for photogenerating hydrogen from water/ethanol gaseous mixtures under dynamic conditions. Monolith designs were printed by additive superposition of microfilaments of titania-based pastes. Factors influencing the efficiency of the photocatalytic reactions, including impregnation of gold nanoparticles (Au NPs), calcination temperature, diameter of microfilaments and monolith design, are investigated. The use of preformed Au NPs assured a constant Au particle size (ca. 4nm) for all samples, which allowed to a precise assessment of the effect of the design of 3D-printed titania monoliths on photocatalytic activity. The impregnation of preformed Au NPs before or after the 3D printing process has a strong influence on the photocatalytic efficiency. The pre-impregnated monoliths have a homogeneous Au NPs distribution throughout the microfilaments, whereas the post-impregnated ones present an asymmetric distribution of Au NPs, observing a high gold concentration at the surface and lower gold concentrations in the inner regions of the printed microfilaments. The gold concentration of the Au-loading suspension was reduced ca. 10 times in post-impregnated samples to ensure a similar amount of Au NPs anchored at the surface of the microfilaments, according to an XPS analysis of the pre- and post-impregnated samples. Although the photocatalytic performance of the pre-impregnated monoliths was improved when samples were calcined at 400°C, due to a stronger contact between the Au NPs and the microfilament supports, the post-impregnated samples with 100 times lower Au concentration (0.005wt.%) exhibited enhanced catalytic performances. Under similar geometric open section and photon absorption conditions, the photoproduction of hydrogen on a weight (or volume) basis increased strongly as the diameter of the filaments decreased, which is explained by a progressive increase of the surface-to-weight and surface-to-volume ratios. The best photoactivity was obtained with a post-impregnated titania monolith 3D printed with microfilaments with 200μm in diameter, which yielded 0.24molH2min−1gAu−1.

Improving the Accuracy of Single Turnover Active Fluorometry (STAF) for the Estimation of Phytoplankton Primary Productivity (PhytoPP)

Photosystem II (PSII) photochemistry is the ultimate source of reducing power for phytoplankton primary productivity (PhytoPP). Single turnover active chlorophyll fluorometry (STAF) provides a non-intrusive method that has the potential to measure PhytoPP on much wider spatiotemporal scales than is possible with more direct methods such as 14C fixation and O2 evolved through water oxidation. Application of a STAF-derived absorption coefficient for PSII light-harvesting (aLHII) provides a method for estimating PSII photochemical flux on a unit volume basis (JVPII). Within this study, we assess potential errors in the calculation of JVPII arising from sources other than photochemically active PSII complexes (baseline fluorescence) and the package effect. Although our data show that such errors can be significant, we identify fluorescence-based correction procedures that can be used to minimize their impact. For baseline fluorescence, the correction incorporates an assumed consensus PSII photochemical efficiency for dark-adapted material. The error generated by the package effect can be minimized through the ratio of variable fluorescence measured within narrow wavebands centered at 730 nm, where the re-absorption of PSII fluorescence emission is minimal, and at 680 nm, where re-absorption of PSII fluorescence emission is maximal. We conclude that, with incorporation of these corrective steps, STAF can provide a reliable estimate of JVPII and, if used in conjunction with simultaneous satellite measurements of ocean color, could take us significantly closer to achieving the objective of obtaining reliable autonomous estimates of PhytoPP.