Biodiesel has been paid more and more attention as a renewable
fuel due to some excellent properties such as renewable, high
cetane number, ultralow sulfur content, no aromatic hydrocarbon,
high flash point, low CO2 emission when compared with diesel. While
others physical properties like high viscosity, high surface
tension, big density and bad volatility would spoil the spray
characteristics of biodiesel fuel, which will affect the thermal
efficiency when running in diesel engine.
Accompanied with constant volume vessel and high speed video
camera system, a high pressure common rail system, which could
provide an injection pressure of 180 MPa, is used to investigate
the characteristics of jatropha curcas biodiesel, palm oil
biodiesel and diesel fuel. The effects of injection pressures and
ambient densities on spray characteristics of these fuels are
studied.
The results show that: The spray penetrations of jatropha curcas
biodiesel and palm oil biodiesel are larger than that of diesel,
and the spray angles of biodiesel fuels are smaller than that of
diesel. The spray penetrations of diesel, jatropha curcas biodiesel
and palm oil biodiesel have the same exponential relationship
between fuel spray penetration and injection pressure, fuel spray
penetration and ambient density: S = P0.29, S =
Pa-0.36. It indicates that, based on the test
results, the fuel physical properties have no effect on the
exponential relationship between fuel spray penetration and
injection pressure, ambient density.