IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/renene/v33y2008i4p769-779.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Modelling of biofuel droplets dispersion and evaporation

Author

Listed:
  • Barata, J.

Abstract

Alternative renewable fuels are more and more important due to increasing oil prices, environmental concerns and their potential to preserve the agricultural activity. For the case of biofuels derived from agricultural crops, several possibilities can be considered, such as raw oil, oil-derived methyl esters, bioethanol or mixtures with conventional fuels (diesel fuel or gasoline). The straight use of vegetable oils and their derivates poses some problems on the mixture formation process and droplet evaporation, that are essentially derived from their much higher viscosity (up to five times the viscosity of the diesel fuel) and higher boiling temperature. The present paper presents a numerical study on evaporating biofuel droplets injected through a turbulent cross-stream. This study uses an Eulerian/Lagragian approach to account for turbulent transport, dispersion, evaporation and coupling between both processes in practical spray injection systems, which usually include air flows in the combustion chamber-like swirl, tumble and squish in I.C. engines or cross-flow in boilers and gas turbines. An array of evaporating biofuel droplets through a cross-flow is studied, and a comparison of the droplet fuel dispersion and evaporation with conventional fuels is performed. The results obtained with DF-2 and RME showed that an homogeneous mixture can only be obtained with very high levels of pre-heating, and the use of ethanol (obtained from sugar or starch crops) may be a better alternative in ignition-assisted combustion systems, while RME can be successfully used as an alternative fuel in applications that utilize diffusion flames.

Suggested Citation

  • Barata, J., 2008. "Modelling of biofuel droplets dispersion and evaporation," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 769-779.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:renene:v:33:y:2008:i:4:p:769-779
    DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2007.04.019
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148107001346
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.renene.2007.04.019?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Monzur Alam Imteaz & A. B. M. Sharif Hossain & Maryam Bayatvarkeshi, 2022. "A mathematical modelling framework for quantifying production of biofuel from waste banana," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 24(2), pages 2010-2021, February.
    2. Kraft, Stephan & Kirnbauer, Friedrich & Hofbauer, Hermann, 2017. "CPFD simulations of an industrial-sized dual fluidized bed steam gasification system of biomass with 8MW fuel input," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 190(C), pages 408-420.
    3. Saha, Kaushik & Abu-Ramadan, Ehab & Li, Xianguo, 2012. "Multicomponent evaporation model for pure and blended biodiesel droplets in high temperature convective environment," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 71-79.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:renene:v:33:y:2008:i:4:p:769-779. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/renewable-energy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.