Chassis Dynamometer and Road Test Performances of Biodiesel-Diesel Fuel-Bioethanol Blend 2010-01-2139

The Department of Automotive and Agricultural Machinery of the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca has been looking for a long time for the possibilities of using alternative fuels. The target vehicle of our investigation, a flexible-fueled vehicle (FFV) has a single fuel tank, fuel system, and engine. Biodiesel and bioethanol are a renewable and environmentally friendly alternative fuels. Our previous researches have pointed out that biodiesel-diesel fuel-ethanol blends can be used in diesel engines with little or no modification. The fuel properties of the blend are very close to those of diesel fuels at low concentrations (up to 20%) of biofuels. For example, the viscosities of the blends are the same as the viscosity of the diesel fuel because the higher viscosity of the biodiesel compensates the lower viscosity of the bioethanol. There has been made the same observation in the case of the density and of the surface tension. The objective of this study was to investigate the rolling and road test performances of a 10% biodiesel - 85% diesel fuel - 5% ethanol blend in a 524 TD BMW automobile with a four-stroke, six-cylinder, E28 code and 86 kW diesel engine. The obtained results were compared to those of diesel fuel and biodiesel. The engine performances (torque and brake power) were tested in a chassis dynamometer test bench. Vehicle performance and speed test were evaluated over acceleration ability (acceleration 0-100 km/h and 0-400 m), elasticity in 4th gear - t₆₀₋₁₀₀, elasticity in 5th gear - t₈₀₋₁₂₀, overtaking in 3/4th gear - t₆₀₋₁₀₀, overtaking in 4/5th gear, t₈₀₋₁₂₀. Based on our results, one could establish that the engine performance determined on the chassis dynamometer in case of used biodiesel-ethanol blend is very similar to the performance obtained by pure biodiesel, but in both cases these were smaller by 3-8 percent than the diesel fuel. In the case of the acceleration ability when engine was fuelled with biodiesel-diesel fuel-ethanol blends results were inferior to those obtained with diesel fuel, but superior to those obtained with biodiesel.