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Micro Emulsions and Blends

1 The Diesel Engine
2 Theory of Vegetable Oil Use as a Fuel
3 Engine suitability
4 Heating the Oil
5 Biodiesel
6 Micro Emulsions and Blends
7 Vegetable Oil Engine Design
8 Vegetable Oil Furnaces and Heaters
9 Oil Types and Filtering
10 Taxation
11 Implications of Vegetable Oil Fuel Use
12 Sources

Vegetable oil has been mixed with alcohols, diesel fuel, petrol, surfactants, cetane improvers, water (often as a component of an aqueous alcohol)and solvents in varying mixes and proportions to form a micro emulsion or blend. The resulting fuel is more suitable than SVO for operation in diesel engines.

The suitability of a given fuel will depend on the exact ingredients, the design of the engine and the ambient temperatures encountered.

Simply mixing vegetable oil with diesel fuel has been shown to be effective 50:50 to 80:20 blends have proven to be reliable in most engines. Studies have found that a model 170F diesel engine could be reliably fuelled with a 30:70 cotton seed oil and diesel blend[7].

The German company BioCar offer equipment to convert a vehicle to run on vegetable oil using a dual tank system. They have a device that monitors the viscosity of the fuel and mixes diesel and heated vegetable oil to give suitable fuel viscosity.

Petrol and kerosene have proved to have a greater effect over diesel with smaller proportions giving better results.

Detailed analysis of ethanol use has shown that particulates are reduced by 50% by the addition of 9% of 95% ethanol (ethanol with a 5% water content)[2]

Studies have also shown that short chain alcohols, act as a suitable viscosity reducer. 1, 2 or 3-Butanol were found to be most suitable although ethanol and methanol have both been utilised.

Goering found that eight parts of soybean oil, when emulsified with two part ethanol and five parts of 1-butanol as stabiliser, performed as well as diesel fuel and was able to start a cold engine.[1]

A micro-emulsion consisting of 53.3% soybean oil, 13.3% of 95% aqueous ethanol and 33.4 vol-% 1-butanol was found to perform comparably to diesel fuel [3].
Two studies of palm oil, diesel fuel and 5-10% water micro-emulsions revealed performance comparable to diesel fuel with less engine wear [4][5].

Schur tested blends of vegetable oil, petrol, alcohol and biodiesel (RME) in different quantities to good results. He found that the fuels were comparable to diesel fuel except when run in DI engines at low engine loads.[6]

1 The Diesel Engine
2 Theory of Vegetable Oil Use as a Fuel
3 Engine suitability
4 Heating the Oil
5 Biodiesel
6 Micro Emulsions and Blends
7 Vegetable Oil Engine Design
8 Vegetable Oil Furnaces and Heaters
9 Oil Types and Filtering
10 Taxation
11 Implications of Vegetable Oil Fuel Use
12 Sources

© All original material on this website is copyright Darren Hill, unless otherwise stated, and may be copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes only as long as the source of the material is stated and a reference to the vegburner website URL is included (http://vegburner.co.uk/). All material is provided "as is" without guarantees or warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied.