Investigation on the Performance Enhancement and Emission Reduction of a Biodiesel Fueled Diesel Engine Based on an Improved Entire Diesel Engine Simulation Model

In order to improve the efficiency of the diesel engine and reduce emissions, an improved heat transfer model was developed in an AVL-BOOST environment which is a powerful and user-friendly software for engine steady-state and transient performance analysis. The improved heat transfer model considers the advantages of the Woschni1978 heat transfer model and Honhenberg heat transfer model. In addition, a five-component biodiesel skeletal mechanism containing 475 reactions and 134 species was developed to simulate the fuel spray process and combustion process since it contained methyl linolenate, methyl linoleate, methyl oleate, methyl stearate, and methyl palmitate, which are a majority component in most biodiesel. Finally, the propulsion and load characteristics of a diesel engine fueled with biodiesel fuel were investigated by the improved heat transfer model in term of power, brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC), soot and NOx emissions. Similarly, the effects of the fuel injection rate on the diesel engine’s characteristic fueled with biodiesel was studied. The result showed that the errors between experiment and simulation were less than 2%. Thus, the simulation model could predict the propulsion and load characteristics of the diesel engine. The nozzle diameter, injection pressure, and injection advance angle are significant to the injection system. Thus, it is very important to choose the injection rate reasonably.