Development of a method that quantifies the filtration efficiency of soft particles in drop-in fuels

Abstract: The global carbon footprint is increasing with course of time. World is moving towards fossil free and reduce the dependency of fossil fuels to meet their daily needs. Transportation industry is the major user of fossil fuels today and major contributor to the CO2 emissions which leads to global warming. Biofuels are promising and sustainable alternative to the fossil fuels. If biofuel is used in its pure form in the vehicles, it asks for engine modifications. Hence, the concept of drop-in fuels are introduced. Drop-in fuels are those fuels in which conventional fossil fuel is blended with biofuel. This blending leads to several advantages like less amount of unburnt hydrocarbons, less toxic and leads to better lubricity of the fuel. On the other hand, in case of blending fossil diesel in biodiesel lead to formation of insoluble organic compounds called as soft particles. These soft particles get accumulated on fuel filter and in turn reduce the amount of fuel entering the engine causing a pressure drop in the flow. This reduction in amount of fuel entering the engine leads to lower engine performance. The study conducted here was successful in developing a method to quantify the soft particles in drop-in fuels where B10 was used as test fuel. The earlier phase of the work comprises literature study on the contaminants in biofuels, working of fuel filters and on some chemical analysis techniques. Literature study is followed by series of experiments that guide through to successfully quantify the soft particles. The earlier stage of experiments included, finding a method to synthesize soft particles in a laboratory scale. This was followed by adding soft particles to fuel and making a synthetic test fluid. Analyzing the filter deposit after filtration helped to quantify the soft particles. The chemical analysis techniques like Gas Chromatography and Mass Spectroscopy (GC/MS) and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) were used for analysis.