Investigation of nanoparticle additives to the biodiesel and diesel fuels for improvement of the performance and exhaust emissions in a compression ignition engine

Worldwide energy demand has been growing steadily during the past five decades, and most experts believe that this trend will continue to rise. The amount of emitted harmful emission gases increases in parallel with increasing energy consumption. This increase has forced many countries to take various precautions and various restrictions on emitted emissions have been carried. In this study effects of addition of oxygen containing nanoparticle additives to diesel and biodiesel fuels on diesel and biodiesel fuel properties and at the same time effects on diesel engine performance and emissions were investigated. Nine different nanoparticle additives namely MgO, Al2O3, TiO2, ZnO, SiO2, Fe2O3, NiO, NiFe2O4 and Zn0.5Ni0.5Fe2O4 were added to diesel fuel at the addition dosage of 25, 50 and 100 ppm and three of them namely MgO, SiO2 and NiO were added to biodiesel fuel at the addition dosage of 25 and 50 ppm. Fuel properties, engine performance and emission characteristics of obtained modified fuels were examined. As a result of this study optimum additive and addition dosage was determined and engine emission values namely NOx and CO were decreased with the addition of nanoparticles.