Effect of changes in ambient conditions on the homogeneous combustion characteristics and flammability limits of biodiesel fuel combustion using surrogate fuel coupled with a combustion mechanism

The purpose of this study was to analyze numerically the homogeneous combustion characteristics of biodiesel and diesel fuels and to investigate the effect of changes in ambient conditions on the homogeneous combustion and flammability limits of biodiesel and diesel using a surrogate species coupled with a combustion mechanism. The ignition delay characteristics of biodiesel and diesel were shown to be below 2 ms when the ambient temperature was less than 1000 K, and at the same time, the ambient pressure was above 20–25 atm. The combustion temperature, combustion pressure, and NO X emissions increased because the chemical reaction rate was influenced by the acceleration of the overall oxidation rate during combustion until the peak point of calculated analysis data among the whole ranges of equivalence ratio conditions. The CO emissions increased as the equivalence ratio rose. Thus, changes in the effect of ambient conditions on the homogeneous combustion characteristics of biodiesel and diesel fuels suggest that formation/oxidation related to the fuel combustion and emission reactions are limited to the thermo-chemical factors.