Blending long chain alcohol as a fuel additive with palm oil biodiesel and analysing the effects of blends on combustion characteristics, performances and emissions of a diesel engine

Biodiesel is one kind of alternative fuel that is renewable, biodegradable, oxygenated, and less polluting. High viscosity, density and lower calorific value are the major drawbacks of biodiesel. To overcome drawbacks of biodiesel, many researches were carried out all over the world by blending biodiesel in different ways with fossil fuel and short chain alcohols as oxygenated additives. Recently, researchers concentrated on long-chain alcohol due to its high cetane number, heating value and oxygen content. From outcomes of many previous studies, the use of long chain alcohols with biodiesel is not covered and concluded completely overall. Because of complete data scarcity, more investigations should be carried out on the use of long chain alcohols. This work investigates the combustion characteristics, performances and emissions of a four-stroke single cylinder direct injection diesel engine fuelled with 2-ethyl 1-hexanol (2-EH) at 5%, 10% and 20% with POME fuel blends as a replacement for fossil fuel. The fuel blends were used and compared with diesel fuel. Fuel blends are experimentally tested at a maximum load of 28 N.m and different engine speeds. Results show that HE5 had lower peak pressure than DF by 1.77% and overall lower CO and NOx emissions than DF by 8.5% and 4.1%.