Increasing energy demand and environment concerns have prompted an evolution of alternative fuel sources. As an alternative fuel source, biodiesel is attractive because it reduces engine emissions. However, biodiesel produces higher NOx emissions compared to ordinary diesel fuel. Previous researches have established many factors that cause biodiesel to produce elevated NOx emissions. This study reviews the impacts of biodiesel combustion on NOx emissions and their reduction approaches in diesel engines. The first part of this study recaps the NOx formation mechanisms for understanding the kinetics behind the NOx forming reactions. The second part describes the factors affecting on NOx emissions. This paper established that higher NOx emissions are produced for biodiesel combustion which influenced by several factors such as physicochemical properties and molecular structure of biodiesel, adiabatic flame temperature, ignition delay time, injection timing and engine load conditions etc. The final section discusses on the reduction of NOx emissions from biodiesel fuelled engines for both pre and post combustion techniques. The results of reduction approaches of the NOx emissions implies, exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) and retarded injection timing are effective as well as low cost techniques than others. Between these two techniques, EGR reduces the NOx emissions at 5–25% EGR rate adequately in biofuelled engine by controlling oxygen content and combustion peak temperature with slightly decreasing HC and CO emissions. However this technique shows few penalties on smoke and PM emissions as well as brake specific fuel consumption if not perfectly optimized.

Impacts of biodiesel combustion on NOx emissions and their reduction approaches

The call for reduction in pollution has been mandated by government′s policies worldwide. This challenges the engine manufacturer to strike an optimum between engine performance and emissions. However with growing technology in the field of fuel injection equipment, the task has become realizable. For past few years it has been the hot topic to improve combustion and emissions of compression ignition engines through optimizing the fuel injection strategies. Choosing between various injection strategies are potentially effective techniques to reduce emission from engines as injection characteristics have great influences on the process of combustion. For example, increasing the fuel injection pressure can improve the fuel atomization and subsequently improve the combustion process, resulting in a higher brake thermal efficiency, producing less HC, CO, PM emissions, but more NOx emission. Pilot injection help in reducing combustion noise and NOx emissions and immediate post injection may help in soot oxidation and late post injection helps in regeneration of diesel particulate filter. This article aims at a comprehensive review of various fuel injection strategies viz varying injection pressure, injection rate shapes, injection timing and split/multiple injections for engine performance improvement and emissions control. Although every strategy has its own merits and demerits, they are explained in detail, in view of helping researchers to choose the better strategy or combination for their applications.

Fuel injection strategies for performance improvement and emissions reduction in compression ignition engines—A review

Investigation on the effect of injection system parameters on performance and emission characteristics of a twin cylinder compression ignition direct injection engine fuelled with pongamia biodiesel–diesel blend using response surface methodology

Review of thermal management of catalytic converters to decrease engine emissions during cold start and warm up

Effects of direct injection timing and blending ratio on RCCI combustion with different low reactivity fuels

Effects of thermal barrier coating on gas emissions and performance of a LHR engine with different injection timings and valve adjustments

In this study, firstly, thermal analyses are investigated on a conventional (uncoated) diesel piston, made of aluminum silicon alloy and steel. Secondly, thermal analyses are performed on pistons, coated with MgO–ZrO2 material by means of using a commercial code, namely ANSYS. Finally, the results of four different pistons are compared with each other. The effects of coatings on the thermal behaviors of the pistons are investigated. It has been shown that the maximum surface temperature of the coated piston with material which has low thermal conductivity is improved approximately 48% for the AlSi alloy and 35% for the steel.

Muhammet Cerit

Papers

Effects of thermal barrier coating on gas emissions and performance of a LHR engine with different injection timings and valve adjustments

Thermal analysis of a ceramic coating diesel engine piston using 3-D finite element method

Temperature and thermal stress analyses of a ceramic-coated aluminum alloy piston used in a diesel engine

Numerical investigation on torsional stress concentration factor at the semi elliptical corrosion pit

Experimental study of NOx emissions and injection timing of a low heat rejection diesel engine