• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.242-249
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• 2018

The use of palm oil and diesel blended with ethanol, known as a microemulsion biofuel, is gaining attention as an attractive renewable fuel for engines that may serve as a replacement for fossil-based fuels. The microemulsion biofuels can be formulated from the mixture of palm oil and diesel as the oil phase; ethanol as the polar phase; methyl oleate as the surfactant; alkanols as the cosurfactants. This study investigates the influence of the three cosurfactants on fuel consumption and exhaust gas emissions in a direct-injection (DI) diesel engine. The microemulsion biofuels along with neat diesel fuel, palm oil-diesel blends, and biodiesel-diesel blends were tested in a DI diesel engine at two engine loads without engine modification. The formulated microemulsion biofuels increased fuel consumption and gradually reduced the nitrogen oxides ($NO_x$) emissions and exhaust gas temperature; however, there was no significant difference in their carbon monoxide (CO) emissions when compared to those of diesel. Varying the carbon chain length of the cosurfactant demonstrated that the octanol-microemulsion fuel emitted lower CO and $NO_x$ emissions than the butanol- and decanol-microemulsion fuels. Thus, the microemulsion biofuels demonstrated competitive advantages as potential fuels for diesel engines because they reduced exhaust emissions.