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Abstract Efficient energy usage and energy saving is one of the nowadays necessity for all scientists of IC engine. This is because of the current environmental challenges that have tremendously increased concerning air pollution, particularly pollutant emissions from vehicles. Yet, industries and governments alike have disregarded this phenomenon which has been considerably contributing to climate change. It is against this background that, the research works carried out in this present study is predominantly focusing on improving energy efficiency and reducing emission levels from diesel engines. This can be achieved with the help of atmospheric-plasma system which can offer a noble solution to the above-mentioned challenges due to its potential to improve combustion efficiency which leads to energy efficiency, while reducing emission levels from diesel engines. In this study, the performance and emissions of a diesel generator supplemented with an atmospheric-plasma system was examined. The diesel engine was used to examine the effects of fuel composition, or brake specific fuel consumption, thermal efficiency and pollutant emissions at different plasma system voltages. To this end, we equally examined the effects of atmospheric-plasma system on energy efficiency improvement and emissions reduction from diesel engine as the main purpose of this study. We do so by testing the diesel-fueled engine generator under the atmospheric-plasma system. The tests were carried out at a constant state condition with the engine running at 2200 rpm with torque and power outputs of 10.4 Nm (75% of the max load) and 2.1 kW, separately, for the tested fuels and this was used to increase the output voltage of the plasma system during this study. The plasma system ionized the intake air and improved the formation of free radicals upon combustion. During this study, the output voltage of the plasma was set within the range of 0–7 kV. The experimental results have indicated that formaldehyde, acetaldehyde and acrolein account for more than 75% of total carbonyl compounds emissions. Simultaneously, it was also observed from the results that higher plasma system voltage reduces pollutants emissions levels. Hence, such reduction is predominantly evident for nitrogen oxides, particulate matters and carbon monoxide. However, the marginal improvements of engine performance and emissions reduction become insignificant when the plasma system voltage reaches 6 kV. On the other hand, increasing the amount of plasma system voltages in diesel engine continues to significantly reduce pollutant emissions. Graphical abstract Image 1 Highlights • Atmospheric plasma system saves energy and reducing emission levels. • Formaldehyde, acetaldehyde and acrolein accounts for 75% of carbonyl compounds. • Higher plasma system voltage lowers pollutants emissions levels. • Improve engine performance as plasma system voltage reaches 6 kV. • PM concentration has been reduced considerably by higher plasma voltage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intend to investigate the effects of biodiesel fuel blends comprising of waste-cooking oil and butanol-diesel (B10W10–B10W40) under steady-state conditions. Both particulate organic carbon (OC) and PM including PM 2.5 and PM 10 significantly decreased with the increasing percentage of biodiesel fuel blends. The fuel blend of B10W40 also demonstrated the most effective function in reducing the emissions of PM 10 and PM 2.5 in the volume by 59.4% and 57.7%, respectively. Moreover, the emissions of nitrogen oxides decreased with the blending of B10W10-B10W40 (13.9–28.5%), while the brake specific fuel consumption was substantially increased (5.69–13.4%). The overall biological toxicity of PM 10 generated from the fuel tested in this study was determined according to Single Cell Gel Electrophoresis assay in human alveolar basal epithelial A549 cells and micronucleus assay in CHO-K1 cells. In addition, the volume of more than 20% waste-cooking oil (B10W20 and B10W40) significantly reduced diesel-induced genotoxicity in lung cells and micronucleus formation in CHO-K1 cells. Collectively, these results indicated that biodiesel fuel blends with the butanol could be a potential alternative fuels for diesel engines because of its substantial property with a significant reduction of the PM-related genotoxicity and the emissions of PM, particulate OC, and NO X . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]