The use of palm oil for light and heavy diesel engines and its environmental benefits for Helsinki

Abstract

Recently, many studies have been published in the field of using different biodiesels in diesel engines. However, the use of these fuels has not been used for different case studies. Moreover, scholars have not paid attention to factors like the price of utilized biodiesels and their costs, considerably. In the present paper, we are concerned with the use of palm oil as a cheap and abundant biodiesel in two different light and heavy diesel engines, and its environmental blueprint was also investigated for Helsinki. A CFD code was taken into consideration to estimate the amount of NO and PM emissions from different diesel engines. Although many different diesel engines can be utilized in a city, however, this research showed how an engine fueled by palm-based biodiesel can be balanced to satisfy the requirements related to the limitation of emissions for Helsinki, annually. It was found that, for this region, the 30% palm oil/diesel mixed fuel led to an insignificant increase in NOx emissions by 0.2% for the light-duty engine and a decrease of 0.7% for the heavy-duty engine whereas a significant decrease in PM emissions by 24 and 11.5% for light-duty diesel engine and heavy-duty diesel engine, respectively. The results of the presented paper demonstrated that there is a narrow border between the fuel waste amount and the exhaust NOx, highlighting the need for obtaining a balanced state between them for different cities based on their sources and their pollution status.