Spray properties of alternative fuels: A comparative analysis of biodiesel and diesel

Chao He, Yunshan Ge*, Jianwei Tan, Xiukun Han

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

86 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Physical properties of biodiesel play an important role in the injection, atomization and combustion performance. An experiment was carried out to investigate the spray properties of biodiesel. The experimental setup was based on an electronic unit-pump (EUP) bench, a constant volume chamber and a high-speed digital camera. The photographs of spray were dealt with by using an image processing procedure. Then the spray tip penetrations and cone angles were obtained and analyzed. The experimental results indicate that the spray tip penetrations and cone angles of biodiesel increase with increasing injection duration. In addition, with decreasing ambient pressure the spray tip penetrations increase while the cone angles decrease. Furthermore, ambient pressure has a stronger effect on the spray properties of biodiesel than injection pressure. On the macroscopically view, the shape of biodiesel spray is similar to that of diesel. The final tip penetrations and cone angles of biodiesel are greater than those of diesel due to its higher viscosity, density and bulk modulus.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1329-1338
Number of pages10
JournalInternational Journal of Energy Research
Volume32
Issue number14
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2008

Keywords

  • Alternative fuels
  • Biodiesel
  • Cone angle
  • Spray property
  • Tip penetration

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