Ali M.A. Attia

Effects of Alumina Nanoparticles Additives Into Jojoba Methyl Ester-Diesel Mixture on Diesel Engine Performance

Currently, using biofuels to operate diesel engines gets a great attention to the extent that it could replace the limited conventional fossil fuels. These fuels have a closed life cycle (renewable) and they have a remarkable effect on the global greenhouse phenomena. Moreover, the use of non-edible vegetable oils is considered a good choice after a suitable chemical and/or thermal treatment to convert them into esters. The use of jojoba oil shows a promising alternative fuel for conventional diesel fuel even there were unfavorable effects including power reduction. The wide spread usage of nano additives to improve the combustion quality may be a good solution for these problems. This study represents an experimental investigation to examine the effect of nano additives on diesel engine performance at variable operating conditions of load and speed. In this work, alumina nano-particles are added to a mixture of jojoba methyl ester (biodiesel) and conventional diesel fuel at the most recommended value (20% biodiesel and 80% diesel fuel) with different doses from 10 up to 50 mg/l. The received mixture is homogenized with an ultrasonicator mixer. It is found that, the appropriate nano-additives dose corresponding to optimal engine performance is about 30 mg/l. At this dose, the overall BSFC is reduced by about 6%, engine thermal efficiency is increased up to 7%, and all engine emissions have been reduced (NOx about 70%, CO about 75 %, smoke opacity about 5%, and UHC about 55 %) compared with the corresponding values obtained when only a blended fuel of 20% biodiesel is used.Copyright

Combustion Characteristics of Jojoba Methyl Ester as an Alternative Fuel for Gas Turbine

The strengthened requirements of new emission norms and the limited fuel resources are the major challenges for researchers over the world. The use of biofuels produced from vegetable oil will be a promising solution. In this case, Jojoba oil comes from very surprising plant as its seed contains 40–60% of its weight as raw oil and grows in desert. The trans-esterification process is used to convert jojoba oil into a Jojoba Methyl Ester (JME). This study aims to characterize the flame of JME as an alternative fuel in the gas turbines. Using of the premixed flame resulted in higher combustion efficiency and low emissions. The premixed flames for liquid fuels can be realized via use of lean premixed pre-vaporized (LPP) combustion method. In this work the jet fuel and blends of jet-JME fuel (with JME volume faction of 10, and 20%) are burned with LPP technique keeping the same equivalence ratio as it is used for burning the base jet fuel to determine the possibility to use the fuel mixture without any modifications in a specific LPP combustor. The main results indicate that, as volume content of JME increase the NOx emissions decrease to be lower than 10 ppm in case of B20. Moreover, the CO emission in case of B20 is higher than that of the jet fuel but at the end of the test section it does not exceed 0.15 %. In the same way, B20 produces higher UHC emissions than the jet fuel; however, at the end of the test section it does not exceed 80 ppm. So it can be concluded that blended Jojoba biodiesel can be used as an alternative fuel for jet fuel.Copyright