Impacts of biodiesel combustion on NOx emissions and their reduction approaches

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 NO emissions compared to ordinary diesel fuel. Previous researches have established many factors that cause biodiesel to produce elevated NO emissions. This study reviews the impacts of biodiesel combustion on NO emissions and their reduction approaches in diesel engines. The first part of this study recaps the NO formation mechanisms for understanding the kinetics behind the NO forming reactions. The second part describes the factors affecting on NO emissions. This paper established that higher NO 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 NO emissions from biodiesel fuelled engines for both pre and post combustion techniques. The results of reduction approaches of the NO 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 NO 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