1 s2.0 S1364032115015531 Main

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 57 (2016) 799821
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/rser
A comprehensive review of biodiesel as an alternative fuel

for compression ignition engine
Ambarish Datta n, Bijan Kumar Mandal
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, Howrah 711103, West Bengal, India
art ic l e i nf o
a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received 11 December 2014
Received in revised form
14 December 2015
Accepted 17 December 2015
Available online 7 January 2016
In search of alternative fuels for CI engines, many experimental studies have been carried out and posted
in the literature during the last few decades. This paper presents a comprehensive review on the production, performance and emissions from a compression ignition engine using biodiesel as alternate to
fossil based diesel fuel. The properties of biodiesel produced from different sources and their fatty acid
composition have also been described. The experimental set up used by different researchers for the
investigations and their ndings regarding performance and emissions with respect to mineral diesel
have been presented in short for a large number of studies. For better illustration of the facts, results of a
few experimental studies available in the literature have been presented in the form of different graphs
for selective important performance and emission parameters as case studies. The overall impression is
that the performance of the engine slightly deteriorates with the use of biodiesel partially or fully instead
of diesel, but the environmental aspects are signicantly improved.
& 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Biodiesel
Alternative fuel
Properties
Production
Performance
Emission
Review
Contents
1.
2.
3.
4.
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Production of biodiesel and its properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1.
Production of biodiesel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.2.
Properties of biodiesel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Engine performance with biodiesel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.1.
Effect on brake thermal efciency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.2.
Effect on brake specic fuel consumption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.3.
Effect on exhaust gas temperature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.4.
Summary of performance analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Effect of biodiesel on engine emissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.1.
Effect on CO emission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.2.
Effect on CO2 emission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.3.
Effect on NOx emission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.4.
Effect on HC emission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.5.
Effect on smoke emission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.6.
Summary of emission analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
800
800
800
802
803
803
805
807
808
808
808
811
813
814
816
819
Abbreviations: ASTM, American Society for Testing and Materials; BSFC, Brake specic fuel consumption; bTDC, Before top dead centre; CI, Compression ignition; COME,
Canola oil methyl ester; DI, Direct injection; EGR, Exhaust gas recirculation; EGT, Exhaust gas temperature; EN, European standards for products and services by European
Committee for Standardization; ESG, Eruca sativa gars; FFA, Free fatty acid; GHG, Green house gas; GTL, Gas to liquid; H2SO4, Sulfuric acid; HOME, Honge oil methyl ester; IS,
Indian Standard; JOME, Jatropha oil methyl ester; KOH, Potassium hydroxide; MEPS, Methyl ester of paradise oil; MOEE, Mahua oil ethyl ester; MOME, Mahua oil methyl
ester; NaOH, Sodium hydroxide; NOME, Neem oil methyl ester; PBDF, Petroleum based diesel fuel; PKOME, Palm kernel oil methyl ester; PNOME, Peanut oil methyl ester;
RME, Rapeseed methyl ester; SOME, Seasame oil methyl ester; SVO, Straight vegetable oil; THC, Total hydrocarbon; VOME, Vegetable oil methyl ester; WFO, Waste frying oil;
WPOME, Waste palm oil methyl ester
n
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: ambarish.datta84@gmail.com (A. Datta).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2015.12.170
1364-0321/& 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
800
A. Datta, B.K. Mandal / Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 57 (2016) 799821
5. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 819
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 819
1. Introduction
The availability of adequate amount of conventional fossil fuel
for internal combustion engines and the associated effects of
global warming and other environmental issues arising due to the
combustion of fossil fuels are the two most threatening problems
of our present day civilization. The rapid industrialization and
urbanization are also making our planet unsafe for us and for the
generations to come. People are now all well aware of the lethal
effects of environmental pollution created by the random use of
fossil fuels. China tops the list of green house gas emitters and
India is not far behind. In fact, India is already the fth largest
greenhouse gas emitter of the world and is expected to become
the third largest GHG emitter by the year 2015. Transport sector
contributes signicant amount of GHG emission [13] particularly
in the developing and developed countries. The maximum amount
of green house gases added to the atmosphere are from electricity
and transportation sectors and the corresponding values are 34%
and 27% [3]. Also the vehicle population throughout the world is
increasing rapidly and in India the growth rate of automotive
industry is one of the largest in the world. It has been anticipated
quite clearly that the problem cannot be solved with the conventional fossil fuels as their reserves are limited and also the
emission norms are expected to be more stringent in future [4].
This situation can be handled by using biofuels as fuels for compression ignition (CI) engines wherever possible.
Another concern is the peak oil theory, which predicts a rising
cost of oil derived fuels caused by severe shortages of oil during an
era of growing energy consumption. According to the peak oil
theory [5], the demand for oil will exceed supply and this gap will
continue to grow, which may cause a growing energy crisis
starting between 2010 and 2020. According to Demirbas [6], a
peak in global oil production may occur between 2015 and 2030.
After that the production process will highly decelerate. India is
the worlds fourth largest petroleum consumer after United States,
China and Japan [7] which makes India dependent upon the oil
exporting countries for meeting its own energy demand.
Diesel engine is the most fuel efcient combustion engine
among the available ones and the transport sector mainly uses
diesel fuel due to its better fuel economy and more effective
power. Several countries such as USA, Germany, France, Italy,
Brazil, and Indonesia are using biodiesel blended with diesel.
Malaysia normally uses palm biodiesel as an alternative to diesel
in their country despite the use of palm oil as edible oil also [8].
The soyabean and the rapeseed biodiesels are generally used in
USA and Europe respectively [9]. In a country like India, biodiesel
also can be used as alternative automotive fuel and also in other
sectors as CI engine fuels. Biodiesel is a fastest growing alternative
fuel. India has huge potential for biodiesel, but it is not yet
explored properly to replace at least some percentage of mineral
diesel with biodiesel. It will be more effective and sustainable, if
biodiesel is produced from non-edible type oil seeds, like karanja
(Pongamia Pinnata) and ratanjyot (Jatropha Curcus) [1013]. The
above oil seeds can be cultivated in the wastelands available in
India. Another advantage of biodiesel is that it can be used in
internal combustion engines in a similar fashion as petro diesel
without any modication of engine geometry.
Rudolf Diesel, the father of diesel engine, demonstrated the
rst use of vegetable oil in compression ignition engine. He used
peanut oil as fuel for his experimental engine. With the availability
of cheap petroleum and appropriate methods for the renement of

crude oil to obtain petro-diesel, diesel engine started evolving.
Later after 1940, vegetable oils were used again as fuel in emergency situations, during the period of Second World War.
Because of the increase in the crude oil prices, limited reserve
of fossil fuels and also for the environmental concern, researchers
showed renewed interest on vegetable oils for producing suitable
alternate to the diesel fuel. Researchers from different corners of
the world are making sincere attempts to nd out the suitable
alternative to diesel fuel which does not require major engine
modications. The literature is already rich with many experimental ndings, but the observations are not always unidirectional. Thus, there is a need of summarizing most of the works
carried out on biodiesel in the last few decades. Motivated by this,
the authors have attempted to review the important works on
biodiesel to get the state of the art of biodiesel production processes, its performance and emission characteristics as CI engine
fuels. The authors have also presented some of the experimental
results from the literature to supplement the summarization
process.
2. Production of biodiesel and its properties

Biodiesel are produced from feedstocks which are renewable in
nature. Since biodiesel is thought to be the alternative fuels for
compression ignition engines which use diesel as the fuel, the
properties of biodiesel should match with the fuel properties as
specied by ASTM and/or EN as well as IS standard in India.
2.1. Production of biodiesel
For the commercialization of biodiesel as CI engine fuel
throughout the world, different production processes of it should
be identied and made available to the people working at grass
root level. The raw materials needed for its production may vary
from country to country. Keeping this in mind researchers are
trying to nd several ways to produce biodiesel from locally
available different feedstocks such as vegetable oil both edible
and non-edible, animal tallow, waste cooking oil and algae. As the
viscosity of the oils and fat derived from the above mentioned
feedstocks is much higher and unsuitable for using in unmodied
CI engines, the rst step is to reduce its viscosity. This is done
through a chemical reaction called transesterication. In this
process, the triglyceride present in the oil or fat reacts with alcohol
(methanol or ethanol) in the presence of a catalyst which is
alkalime in nature. A catalyst such as sodium or potassium
hydroxide is required. Glycerol (also called glycerin) is produced as
a byproduct. The overall reaction of the transesterication process
has been shown in Fig. 1 following Saka and Kusdiana [14].
Generally, methanol is used to produce biodiesel because of its
availability and lower reaction time, and the nal product (biodiesel) is called as methyl ester of the raw oil used. Sometimes,
ethyl alcohol is also used for the production of biodiesel, and it is
called as the ethyl esters of the corresponding oil. Ideally, transesterication is potentially a less expensive way of transforming
the large, branched molecular structure of the bio-oils into smaller,
straight chain molecules of the type required in regular diesel
combustion engines. The approximate proportions of different
CH2OCOR1
|
CHOCOR2
+ 3 CH3OH
|
3
CH2OCOR
(Triglycerides)
(Methanol)
CH2OH
R1 COOCH3
|
|
CHOH + R2COOCH3
|
|
CH2OH
R3COOCH3
(Glycerin)
(Methyl Esters)
Fig. 1. Transesterication reaction [14].
reactants and products in the transesterication reaction are:

100kgs of oil 10kgs of methanol-100kgs of biodiesel
10kgs of glycerol
A biodiesel blend is pure biodiesel mixed with petro-diesel in
appropriate proportions. Biodiesel blends are referred to as Bxx.
The xx indicates the amount of biodiesel by volume in the blend
of biodiesel and petro-diesel [6]. For example, B80 refers to a blend
of 80% biodiesel and 20% petro-diesel by volume. The biodiesel
production techniques from various raw feedstocks as reported by
different researchers are presented in the next part of this section.
Sharma and Singh [15] produced biodiesel from karanja and
mahua oils as well as the mixture of the two non-edible oils in the
same ratio on volume basis. The higher fatty acid content of the
above said two straight vegetable oils forced them to use two step
reactions. The rst one was acid esterication for lowering fatty
acid content to a desired limit. The second step was alkaline
transesterication for the conversion of the already treated oil to
fatty acid methyl ester or biodiesel. H2SO4 and KOH were added as
catalysts with methanol for esterication and transesterication
processes respectively. They preferred methanol over ethanol
because methanol was less costly and the reaction was also faster.
Ilkl et al. [16] produced biodiesel from safower oil by transesterication process using NaOH as a catalyst. After separation of
glycerol from product, H2SO4 was added as a depolarizer and the
biodiesel was then washed adding equal amount of water to
separate catalyst and the remaining portion of alcohol.
Saka and Kusdiana [14] employed a method to produce biodiesel through transesterication reaction of rapeseed oil without
using a catalyst. The above said method was termed as a supercritical methanol biomass conversion method. The pressure and
temperature in this process were quite elevated compared to the
normal pressure and temperature of transesterication reaction.
Venkanna and Reddy [17] produced biodiesel from honne oil
through a three stage transesterication process with methanol
which comprised of acid esterication, alkali transesterication
and post treatment. H2SO4 was used as catalyst in acid esterication and KOH was used in alkali transesterication. The post
treatment method consisted of gentle water wash thrice using
distilled water. Biodiesel was produced from eruca sativa gars
(ESG) vegetable oil by Li et al. [18] on lab scale through transesterication process with methanol. They used a heteropoly acid
salt as catalyst during the transesterication process of ESG oil.
Production of biodiesel from rubber seed oil through a two
stage method of transesterication with methanol, which followed
an alkali esterication using H2SO4 as a catalyst and transesterication with methanol using NaOH as a catalyst was studied by
Ramadhas et al. [19]. Biodiesel production from non-edible animal
tallow was studied by Oner and Altun [20]. Biodiesel was prepared
through transesterication of tallow with methanol in the presence of NaOH as catalyst. Ghadge and Raheman [21] produced
biodiesel from mahua oil having high free fatty acid in it. Firstly,
the fatty acid content was determined by a standard titrimetry
method and after that a pretreatment method was involved for
lowering the higher acid value. Finally, the transesterication
reaction was carried out with methanol using KOH as an alkaline
catalyst. Biodiesels from different straight vegetable oils having
high phosphorous content and having either low or high acid
801
values were studied by Mendow et al. [22]. Due to low acidity of

soyabean oil, direct transesterication with methanol as an alcohol
was used to obtain biodiesel using NaOH as a catalyst. Due to
higher acid value of crude coconut oil, they used a two stage
method of transesterication with methanol. It was consisted of
alkali esterication using H2SO4 as a catalyst followed by transesterication using NaOH as a catalyst to obtain biodiesel.
Charpe and Rathod [23] treated waste sunower frying oil with
methanol as an alcohol in the presence of P. uorescens enzyme as
catalyst for the production of biodiesel. Due to low cost the
researchers used waste sunower frying oil as raw material and P.
uorescens as catalyst because of its higher conversion rate. Soybean oil was used to produce biodiesel by Lin and Lin [24] through
transesterication process with methanol using NaOH as a catalyst
accompanied by peroxidation to improve the fuel properties of the
biodiesel. Water wash and distillation process were used to
remove un-reacted methanol, water and other impurities. Nabi
et al. [25] and Srivastava and Verma [26] produced biodiesel from
karanja oil. Nabi and the co-workers rst removed water and other
contaminants from karanja oil and then reduced the fatty acid
concentration of the oil by acid esterication process using H2SO4
as catalyst. Thereafter, they followed the normal transesterication
process using methanol in the presence of NaOH as a catalyst.
On the other hand, Srivastava and Verma [26] did not employ
any pretreatment (like acid esterication) of raw karanja oil, but
they used some after treatment of the biodiesel produced by the
transesterication process. The after treatment method employed
was bubble wash method with the aid of 10% phosphoric acid
solution in warm water. For getting the nal quality biodiesel, it
was puried by passing air through aquarium stone for at least
24 h. The whole process was repeated three times to get the nal
product in the form of karanja biodiesel. They have tested both
karanja oil and its biodiesel and the biodiesel yield was found to be
84% which was lower than that obtained (97%) by Nabi et al. [25].
Sharon et al. [27] produced biodiesel from used palm oil by
transesterication process in laboratory scale setup with the
addition of methanol in a proportion of 6:1 molar ratio, using
NaOH as a catalyst. After completion of the reaction process, glycerol was separated using separating funnel. Patil and Deng [28]
prepared biodiesel from raw jatropha and karanja oils in two steps
namely, acid esterication and alkali transesterication. But, in
case of corn and canola oils only the alkali transesterication step
was needed as the fatty acid content of them were lower than that
of jatropha and karanja. In another study, Ghadge and Raheman
[29] reported the production of biodiesel from crude mahua oil by
transesterication reaction with methanol in the molar ratio of 6:1
by using KOH as an alkaline catalyst followed by a pretreatment
method consisting of determination of ph value by titrimetry and
esterication of crude mahua oil with methanol by using H2SO4 as
a catalyst. Wang et al. [30] also followed two step esterication
processes consisting of acid esterication and alkali transesterication for the production of biodiesel from non-edible oils. Acid
esterication was done by anhydrous sulfuric acid as an acid catalyst and alkali transesterication was done by KOH as an alkali
catalyst with methanol. Lu et al. [31] reported a pre-esterication
of crude jatrohpa oil, using sulfuric acid as a catalyst during production of biodiesel. After pre-esterication process the researcher
transesteried crude jatropha with methanol using KOH as a
catalyst.
The above review shows that biodiesel can be produced from
various raw materials under different conditions using different catalysts depending on acid values of raw feedstocks. The biodiesel yield
depends not only on the type of feedstocks used, but also depends on
molar ratio of alcohol to oil, the catalyst type and its amount and
reaction conditions such as temperature, duration and sometimes
pressure. The information related to different production processes as
802
Table 1
Biodiesel production using various types of feedstocks with reaction variables.
Name of Researchers
Feedstock
Alcohol type Molar ratio of

alcohol to oil
Catalyst used
Catalyst amount Reaction condition
Biodiesel yield (%)
Saka and Kusdiana

[14]
Sharma and Singh
[15]
Rapeseed oil
Methanol
42:1
NaOH
95%
Karanja oil
Mahua oil
Mixture of two
Safower oil
Honne oil
Methanol
6:1
8:1
H2SO4
KOH
1 ml
1 wt%
Methanol
Methanol
8:1
NaOH
H2SO4
0.4%
0.5 ml
4:1
KOH
0.751.5%
heteropoly acid
H2SO4
NaOH
NaOH
H2SO4
KOH
NaOH
H2SO4
P. uorescens
enzyme
NaOH
H2SO4
NaOH
NaOH
0.04 m mol
0.5%
5g
2g
1%
0.7%
0.35%
Ilkl et al. [16]

Venkanna and Reddy
[17]
Li et al. [18]
Ramadhas et al. [19]
Eruca sativa gars oil

Rubber seed oil
Methanol
Methanol
Oner and Altun [20]

Ghadge and Raheman [21]
Mendow et al. [22]
Animal tallow
Mahua oil
Methanol
Methanol
Crude soybean oil

Coconut oil
Waste sunower frying oil
Methanol
6:1
6:1
9:1
6:1
6:1
Methanol
3:1
Soybean oil
Karanja oil
Methanol
Methanol
6:1
Srivastava and Verma Karanja oil

[26]
Sharon et al. [27]
Palm oil
Patil and Deng [28]
Karanja, jatropha, canola and
corn oil
Methanol
Methanol
Methanol
6:1
9:1
Ghadge and Raheman [29]

Wang et al. [30]
Mahua oil
Methanol
6:1
Euphorbia lathyris, Sapium

sebiferum, Jatropha curcas oil
Jatropha curcas oil
Methanol
8:1
6:1
6:1
Charpe and Rathod

[23]
Lin and Lin [24]
Nabi et al. [25]
Lu et al. [31]
Methanol
followed by the researchers have been summarized and presented in

Table 1 to get an overall idea at a glance.
Minute look at the above said table reveals that the biodiesel
yield has an average value of more than 85%. The analysis of the
results shows that maximum yield of 99% is obtained with ESG oil.
Mahua, jatropha, karanja and rapeseed oil have also high yield in
the range of above 90%. The yield from waste frying oil is normally
low and it is only 63.84% with sunower based waste frying oil.
Another interesting point can be noted that the yield is not
always the same for a particular oil. Depending upon the fatty acid
contents and its distribution, acid esterication process may be
needed before the alkaline esterication to lower the acid value of
the oil. This process will produce more biodiesel than if only
alkaline esterication is used in case of oil having higher free
fatty acid.
More recently, production of biodiesel has been started from
different types of algae and it was found that the oil yield of algae
based biodiesel is signicantly higher than the oils and animal fats
described earlier in this section. These biodiesels are generally
referred in the literature as third generation biodiesels and this
could be a potential alternative due to its much lower gestation
period [32] and huge availability [33]. A comprehensive review on
it has been presented by Mata et al. [32]. Khan et al. [33] has also
presented a critical evaluation on the prospects of biodiesel production from microalgae. They have emphasized the need to
explore the possibilities of producing biodiesel from microalgae, as
it will not raise the fuel vs. food debate. This is due to the fact that
the production of microalgae does not require the normal land
where cereal crops are being produced. Demirbas et al. [34] also
produced biodiesel from algal oil by using transesterication
350400 C at 45
65 MPa
50 C for 1 h
5565 C for 2 h
45, 55, 60 and
65 C;
30, 60, 90, 120
and 150 min
65 C for 12 h
4050 C for 2 h
98.6%
95.71% 94.0%
(hybrid)
89%
98.1%
-
60 C for 3 h
60 C for 30 min
98%
60 C for 2 h
60 C for 1.5 h
45 C
63.84%
1%
1%
28.5 g
60 C
50 C for 1 h
97%
70 C for 1 h
84%
NaOH
H2SO4
KOH
KOH
KOH
0.6 wt%
0.5%
2%
0.45 g
0.7% w/v
65 C for 3 h
60 C for 2 h
55 C for 1 h
87%
80%
9095%
60 C for 30 min
98%
H2SO4
KOH
metatitanic acid
KOH
0.21 wt%
0.61.2 wt%
1.3%
60 C for 30 min
86.2%
88.3% 86.2%
98%
5%
90 C for 2 h
method. Deng et al. [35] also stated that microalgae have the
potential to become the viable alternative for production of
biodiesel.
As the end of this section, the ow chart showing different
processes along with their reactants and products for biodiesel
production from vegetable oils has also been shown in Fig. 2 from
the work of Sharma et al. [36]. The ow chart for biodiesel production from microalgae has also been presented in Fig. 3 based on
the work of Naja et al. [37].
2.2. Properties of biodiesel
The performance, combustion and emission characteristics of
any biodiesel fueled engine depend on the thermo-physical
properties of biodiesel. The viscosity, density, cetane number,
caloric value, ash and re points, cloud and pour points are the
major properties of biodiesel which are to be considered. Several
researchers have reported that the properties of biodiesel depend
upon their fatty acid contents and chemical compositions. Therefore, before using the biodiesel in a compression ignition engine it
is mandatory to measure its properties as specied by ASTM
D6751 and EN 14214 standards, which are the most popular and
well known standards for biodiesel. In India, IS 15607 standard is
followed for using biodiesel as fuel in an automotive engine. Different properties of biodiesel produced from various oils and those
of petro-diesel are compiled from the previous works of several
researchers and are presented in Table 2 for comparison.
Generally, the properties of biodiesel are similar to that of
petro-diesel. Among all the parameter, viscosity is the most
important as it is directly linked with the injection system of the
engine. The higher viscosity affects the uidity as well as the

atomization during combustion which may also cause incomplete
combustion and carbon deposits at the injectors [6,52,53]. Flash
point is the measure of ammability of the fuel. Flash point is also
inuenced by the chemical properties of biodiesel, such as presence of double bonds, number of carbon atoms [52]. Cetane
number is the measure of combustion quality and the higher
cetane number implies a shorter ignition delay. Since, biodiesel
generally have longer fatty acid carbon chain, its cetane number is
higher than diesel. This also enhances the ignition quality by
shortening the delay period, which nally increases the combustion duration [6,52]. Caloric value is the measure of energy
content of a fuel [54]. Since biodiesel contains 11% oxygen by
Recycled
Vegetable Oils
Dilute acid esterification

Methanol + KOH
Sulphur + Methanol
Methanol
Recovery
803
weight [6]; the higher heating values are relatively lower than
petro-diesel [6]. For the above said reason, the lower caloric
value is less than that of diesel [52]. Qi et al. [55] observed that due
to the higher density and lower heating value of biodiesel the
power output and the torque are lower than those of diesel.
Moreover, biodiesel contains very small amount of phosphorous
and sulfur and hence the emission of oxides of sulfur (SOx) is
almost negligible. In addition, the higher ash point (more than
100 C) of biodiesel makes the storage and transportation issues
less important. The properties of biodiesel at low temperatures are
poorer than those of diesel oil. The pour point is generally higher
than that of diesel and this may create some complications for the
operation in cold weather. Biodiesel has good lubricant properties
with respect to diesel oil, in particular, diesel with a very small
amount of sulfur. This is very important to reduce wear in the
engine and the injection system. Table 3 shows average fatty acid
prole for different feedstocks for biodiesel fuel. Although the fatty
acid distributions are not the same in different feedstocks, but a
pattern is noticed among the different feedstocks. These variations
will affect the cetane number of biodiesels produced from various
feedstocks.
Transesterification
Crude Glycerin
Glycerin Refining
3. Engine performance with biodiesel
Crude Biodiesel
Alternative fuels or supplementary fuels used in engines are

normally evaluated on the basis of both engine performances and
their environmental impacts. The most important performance
parameters considered by the researchers in the eld of internal
combustion engines are power output and exhaust gas temperature, specic fuel consumption and brake thermal efciency. This
section presents and discusses the results of different studies
available in the literature related to the above said parameters of
compression ignition engine using biodiesel and blends of biodiesel and petro-diesel as fuels.
Refining
Residue
Glycerin
Fig. 2. Typical ow chart of biodiesel production [36].
3.1. Effect on brake thermal efciency

The ratio of the brake power developed by the engine and the
energy released per unit time due to complete combustion of fuel
is called brake thermal efciency of the engine. From the energetic
point of view, it is the most important parameter for the evaluation of performance of an engine. Some of the results on brake
thermal efciency of CI engine reported in the literature by different researchers have been presented in the following section.
Fig. 3. Flow chart of biodiesel production from microalgae [37].
Table 2
Properties of diesel and biodiesel produced from different feedstocks.
Different fuels Density
(kg/m3)
Kinematic viscosity at 40 C
(mm2/s)
Cetane no. Heating value

(MJ/kg)
Cloud point
(C)
Flash point
(C)
Fire point
(C)
Pour point
(C)
Refs.
Diesel
Mahua
Karanja
Palm
Cotton seed
Jatropha
Polanga
Soybean
Sunower
Rapeseed
Honge
Peanut
Corn
Palm Kernel
Waste Fried
Jojoba
Neem
2.442.60
3.985.72
4.379.6
4.55.11
69.6
4.23
3.99
4.05739.5
4.3814.4
4.58511
5.6
5.251
4.363
3.248
4.869
19.2
8.8
4750
4858
50- 62
52
3751.3
5051.6
37.654.5
45
54
55.4
62.1
55
63.5
51
214.6
14
2
10.2
13.2
6875
129208
170205
173
148
140
69163
183
177275
163
193
167
131
167
61
80
141
182
20
6
65.1
8
4
4.2
4.3
[21,25,27,49]
[21,29,38]
[25,26,3942]
[27,43,44]
[43,45]
[40]
[40]
[43,44,46,47]
[43,44]
[34,43,46]
[48]
[44]
[44]
[44]
[44]
[49]
[50]
850
880916
880890
870878.4
850885
873
869
885914
880885.6
872885
890
886.4
885.8
876.6
884.2
866
820
4244.3
3739.4
36.1242.13
37.239.91
37.541.68
42.673
41.397
37.339.66
37.539.95
37.339.9
36.01
39.7
39.87
38.53
39.68
43.38
40.1
804
Table 3
Average composition (%) of fatty acids for different feedstocks.
Feedstock
Palmitic
Stearic
Palmitoleic
Oleic
Linoleic
Linolenic
Arachidic
Refs.
Mahua
Rubber seed
Sunower
Rapeseed
Cotton seed
Soybean
Jatropha
Honge
Karanja
Peanut
Corn
Palm
Palm Kernel
Waste Fried
1628.2
10.2
4.96.8
3.495.2
11.67
11.711.75
13.2316
10.5
3.711.65
17.2
11.4
49.8
11.5
27.3
1425.1
8.7
2.33.26
0.851.4
0.89
3.153.97
5.407
5.56
2.48.9
2.7
1.3
2.9
1.4
4.9
0.85
4151
24.6
16.9332.6
64.466
13.27
21.2723.26
41.6249.39
49.39
44.571.3
40.5
27.1
38.6
15.9
36.1
8.917.9
39.6
59.473.73
18.922.3
57.51
53.755.53
3336.99
20.37
10.818.3
36.6
60.2
6.6
1.8
25.7
16.3
0
5.68.23
0
6.318.12
0.22 40.80
3.66
0.5
1.9
03.3
1.9
1.23
0.20
1.36
[15,21,29,38]
[19]
[19,44]
[19,44]
[19]
[19,44]
[30,31,51]
[31,51]
[39,41]
[44]
[44]
[44]
[44]
[44]
Gumus [56] observed a reduction in brake thermal efciency of

a four stroke single cylinder diesel engine using hazelnut kernel oil
methyl ester (biodiesel) as fuel. This type of behavior was attributed to the lower heating value and higher viscosity of biodiesel
than that of diesel, which resulted higher brake specic fuel consumption and led to a decrease in brake thermal efciency. He also
reported from his experimental investigation that with the
advancement of injection timing and increase in compression ratio
and injection pressure, brake thermal efciency increased as the
fuel consumption decreased under the above mentioned conditions. Puhan et al. [57] noted a slight decrease in brake thermal
efciency with linseed biodiesel compared to mineral diesel.
Ozsezen et al. [58] used waste palm oil methyl ester (WPOME),
canola oil methyl ester (COME) and petroleum based diesel fuel
(PBDF) as fuels to run an inline six cylinder water cooled, direct
injection, naturally aspirated four stroke 6.0 L Ford Cargo CI engine
having compression ratio 15.9:1. They observed that the use of
WPOME and COME with respect to the use of PBDF resulted in
marginal reductions of brake thermal efciency by 1.42% and 0.12%
respectively at full load condition and at a constant speed of
1500 rpm. It can be concluded that the chemical energy of the
above said test fuels have been converted into mechanical energy
almost in the same manner.
Mahanta et al. [59] used karanja oil methyl esters for their
experimental work on diesel engines. They found a 27% decrease
in brake thermal efciency of the engines when neat biodiesel was
used instead of neat diesel. Agarwal and Dhar [60] used neat
karanja oil and preheated karanja oil to run a four stroke diesel
engine. The decrease in efciency with this straight vegetable oil
was found to be even more. It was also reported that when SVO
was preheated, the efciency increased but still remained much
lower than diesel fuel. The reductions in brake thermal efciency
were found to be 45% and 25% with non-preheated and preheated
straight vegetable oils respectively. The main reasons behind these
reductions in thermal efciency were reported to be poor volatility
and higher viscosity of both the above said fuels. Rao et al. [61]
reported a slight decrease in brake thermal efciency of a single
cylinder direct injection air cooled gen-set diesel engine when
jatropha biodiesel was used instead of petro-diesel. According to
them, the decrease in efciency of the engine with jatropha oil
methyl ester and its blends was due to the early start of combustion of biodiesel resulting an increase in compression work and
heat loss.
Banapurmath et al. [6263] experimented with biodiesels
produced from marotti oil (non-edible obtained from a medicinal
plant in India) and honge oil on a single cylinder water cooled four
stroke diesel engine. They found a decrease in thermal efciency
with the addition of marotti oil methyl ester (biodiesel) to diesel.
0.9
The highest brake thermal efciency with neat marotti oil methyl
ester was obtained at 80% load as 28.38%, whereas at the same
loading condition the value with diesel fuel was 31.25%. B20 blend
of marotti oil methyl ester and diesel showed better thermal
efciency compared to other blended fuels. The increase in the
efciency with B20 compared to B10 was attributed to more
complete combustion and the additional lubricity of biodiesel
which reduced the frictional power losses. Further increase of
biodiesel percentage in the blends decreased the effective caloric
value of the fuel and thus the efciency was reduced. In case of
honge oil methyl ester, brake thermal efciency was lower than
that of diesel. At 80% load condition, the authors found the maximum efciency. In case of diesel, it was 31.25%, whereas with
honge oil methyl ester it was 29.51%.
On the contrary, some reverse trends in the variation of brake
thermal efciency were also observed by several researchers. In an
experimental study conducted by Laforgia and Ardito [64] on an
indirect injection diesel engine, it was observed that brake thermal
efciency increased with biodiesel by about 10% over mineral
diesel as fuel. Raheman and Ghadge [65] conducted an experimental study on indirect injection Ricardo E6 diesel engine with
pre-combustion chamber. They found an increase in brake thermal
efciency with the increase in compression ratio because of
improvement of combustion characteristics. They also observed
that the efciency increased when advance ignition was provided.
This was mainly due to more time available for injection and thus
reduction in rapid combustion leading to an undesirable effect
called knocking. However, the effect of increase of compression
ratio and advance injection timing were noted to be more prominent in case of blends having higher percentages of biodiesel
compared to diesel. An experimental work was carried out by
Deore and Jahagirdar [66] on a single cylinder, four stroke, water
cooled diesel engine of small capacity (3.5 kW) using biodiesels
from jatropha and karanja and mineral diesel as fuels. The
experiment was carried out keeping the compression ratio xed at
18. At higher load, it was observed that the brake thermal efciency of the engine using jatropha biodiesel was higher than
using diesel and karanja biodiesel by 9.29% and 2.76% respectively.
Song and Zhang [67] observed slightly higher thermal efciency for soybean oil methyl ester compared to mineral diesel as
fuel. They explained this increase in thermal efciency from the
fact that biodiesel contained small amount of oxygen which acted
as combustion promoter and led towards complete combustion of
biodiesel blended fuels. Ceviz et al. [68] observed that with the use
of hazelnut oil methyl ester as fuel in a four stroke direct injection
diesel engine, the effective efciency increased by about 12% for
B20 compared to mineral diesel. While experimenting on single
cylinder air cooled (using radial fan) diesel engine, Rath et al. [69]
32
30
28
25
20
15
10
5
Diesel
Mahua Biodiesel
efciency with load is lower with biodiesel than with diesel.

However, the difference in efciency with mahua biodiesel and
diesel remains almost same at all load conditions. The maximum
decreases in brake thermal efciency for mahua, jatropha and
used palm biodiesels are noted to be 13%, 7.2% and 7.26% respectively with respect to neat diesel. So, it can be concluded from
these case studies that the brake thermal efciency decreases in
general when biodiesels are used instead of diesel under the same
operating conditions.
3.2. Effect on brake specic fuel consumption
Brake specic fuel consumption is one of the most important
parameters to describe the performance of an engine and is
dened as the fuel consumption rate to produce unit brake power.
Generally, the specic fuel consumption of the blended fuel is
more because of the lower heating value of biodiesel than conventional diesel. The heating value of biodiesel is less than that of
diesel due to around 11% oxygen content in the fuel which does
not contribute to heat generation during combustion inside the
cylinder [25]. The variations in specic fuel consumption rate
using biodiesel as fuel for various operating conditions of engines
as adopted by different researchers in the elds of alternative fuels
during the past few decades have been reviewed and presented in
this section.
Gumus [56] observed that the brake specic fuel consumption
increased when hazelnut kernel oil methyl ester was used as the
complete replacement of mineral diesel as CI engine fuel. It was
because of its low heat content and higher viscous nature that
increased the fuel consumption rate. About 22.66% increase in
BSFC was observed throughout the load range. It was also reported
that the brake specic fuel consumption decreased with the
advancement of injection timing, increase in compression ratio
and injection pressure. Laforgia and Ardito [64] also reported the
same kind of behavior with biodiesel and the reasons behind this
kind of behavior were also same as explained by Gumus [56].
Utlua and Kocak [77] conducted an experimental study on a four
cylinder, direct injection, turbocharged, intercooled diesel engine
using waste frying oil methyl ester and reported that the brake
specic fuel consumption with waste frying oil methyl ester was
14.34% higher than that of diesel fuel. They concluded that the low
heating value and the higher density of waste frying oil methyl
ester were responsible for the increased fuel consumption rate.
Raheman and Ghadge [65] investigated the effect of compression ratio (varied from 18:1 to 20:1) and ignition timing (varied
from 35 to 45 bTDC) on the performance of a Ricardo E6 engine.
They found that lower compression ratio and retarded ignition
35
Brake Thermal Efficiency (%)
35
observed slight improvement in brake thermal efciency using

neat karanja oil methyl ester instead of mineral diesel. At the same
operating condition, the brake thermal efciency with diesel was
28.25%, whereas the thermal efciency with neat karanja biodiesel
was found to be 32.5%. The authors explained that the higher
viscosity of karanja oil methyl ester increased the mechanical
efciency of the engine and that resulted to the improvement of
brake thermal efciency.
From another experimental study by Raheman and Ghadge [70]
on the indirect injection Ricardo E6 diesel engine with precombustion chamber, it was reported that at a compression ratio
of 18:1 and injection timing of 40 bTDC, brake thermal efciency
obtained using mahua biodiesel was comparable to that with neat
diesel fuel. Also, it was observed by Canakci [71] and Zhu et al. [72]
that there was no such signicant change in brake thermal efciency of biodiesel in comparison to petro diesel when used in an
unmodied diesel engine. Kong and Kimber [73] used neem biodiesel in large diesel engines having capacity in the range of MW.
They observed a slight decrease in brake thermal efciency at
higher load while using neem biodiesel as fuel. Finally, they concluded that on an average the thermal efciency with neem-diesel
blend was comparable to that of diesel. An et al. [74] experimented
with waste cooking oil biodiesel on a four cylinder, four-stroke,
turbocharged, direct injection Euro IV diesel engine at different
speeds and two load conditions. At full load condition, biodiesel
and biodieseldiesel blended fuels gave better brake thermal
efciency than that of diesel. However, at part load (25% of full
load) condition the result was found to be quite different and a
reverse trend was observed. It was attributed to low fuel/air
equivalence ratios of biodiesel at part load, which could not turn
its oxygenated nature to be an advantage at that stage. Also it was
reported that higher kinematic viscosity of biodiesel predominated the atomization process as well as mixing with air and
led to a poorer combustion, thus thermal efciency was reduced.
To have a better idea about the variation of brake thermal
efciencies of CI engines fueled with different biodiesels, some of
the results reported in the literature have been partially reproduced and presented in Fig. 4(a)(c) as case studies.
It has been observed that Puhan et al. [75], Banapurmath et al.
[76] and Sharon et al. [27] carried out the investigations using very
similar type of experimental setup. The corresponding results
using methyl esters of mahua, jatropha and used palm oil as fuels
have been shown in Fig. 4(a)(c) respectively. The gures show
that the efciencies with the above said three biodiesels are lower
than that of diesel fuels. It can further be noted from gures that
the efciency increases with load upto certain value in all the
cases for all fuels including neat diesel. But, the rate of increase of
24
20
16
12
8
Diesel
Jatropha Biodiesel
Brake Power (kW)
30
25
20
15
Diesel
Used Palm Biodiesel
10
0
0
805
Brake Power (kW)

Fig. 4. Effect of different biodiesels on brake thermal efciency.
Brake Power (kW)
806
timing caused a poorer combustion of biodiesel and it led to an

increase of specic fuel consumption by 38.3% for neat biodiesel
than that of diesel. At higher compression ratio, the increment
reduced to 22.4% only. It was attributed to the lowering of viscosity
and increase in volatility of biodiesel which yielded relatively
better performance at higher compression ratio. The advancement
of injection timing showed that mean BSFC was reduced by 15.8%
for 10 advancement of fuel injection and the major portion
(almost 11%) of this was recorded for 5 advancement from 35
bTDC to 40 bTDC. In another study by Raheman and Ghadge [70]
on the same test setup and same test fuels, at xed compression
ratio of 18:1 and static injection timing of 40 bTDC, brake specic
fuel consumption was found to be 41.4% higher for 100% mahua
biodiesel than that of diesel because of 12% low caloric value and
4% higher viscosity of mahua biodiesel compared to those of diesel
fuel. Kaplan et al. [78] experimented on a Peugeot make medium
duty diesel engine with sunower oil methyl ester as fuel. They
found that the fuel consumption with sunower oil methyl ester
was higher than mineral diesel. The 10% lower caloric value of
sunower oil methyl ester with respect to diesel was the main
reason behind this kind of behavior, as pointed out by them.
Hasimoglu et al. [79] conducted an experimental study with
Mercedes Benz, four cylinder, turbocharged, direct injection diesel
engine using rened sunower oil methyl ester (biodiesel) as fuel.
They observed a 13% increase in the specic fuel consumption
with biodiesel. This type of behavior was due to the combined
effect of lower heating value and higher density as reported by
Hasimoglu and the co-authors. Qi et al. [80] studied the effect of
soybean oil methyl ester on the performance, emission and combustion of a single cylinder, naturally aspirated, four stroke, water
cooled, direct injection, high speed diesel engine. It was reported
by them that the 10.2% lower heating value of soybean oil methyl
ester resulted about 11% higher biodiesel consumption rate than
diesel for a desired amount of power output. An experimental
investigation was carried out by Canakci [71] on a John Deere, four
cylinder, four stroke, turbocharged, direct injection diesel engine
using diesel and soybean biodiesel. He noted a 13.8% higher value
of brake specic fuel consumption in case of biodiesel with respect
to mineral diesel. Zhu et al. [72] conducted an experimental study
in an Isuzu naturally aspirated, water cooled, four cylinder, direct
injection diesel engine using waste cooking oil biodiesel and its
blends with ethanol and diesel. It was found that BSFC increased
approximately by 13% with biodiesel mainly due to the lower
caloric value of biodiesel compared to Euro V diesel fuel.
Puhan et al. [57] used linseed oil methyl ester in a single
cylinder, four stroke, constant speed, vertical, air cooled, direct
injection diesel engine. They observed approximately about 9%
increase in specic fuel consumption with linseed oil methyl ester
throughout the load range compared to that of diesel under the
same operating conditions. Higher viscosity and low caloric value
of biodiesel were identied to be the possible reasons for the
increase of fuel consumption rate. Anand et al. [81] observed that
BSFC of waste cooking oil biodiesel and diesel blended fuel was
17% higher compared to mineral diesel due to the combined effect
of higher viscosity and lower caloric value of waste cooking oil
biodiesel, while using in a single cylinder, four cylinder, naturally
aspirated diesel engine. Ozsezen et al. [58] experimented with
waste palm oil methyl ester and canola oil methyl ester in a Ford
Cargo, six cylinder, naturally aspirated, direct injection diesel
engine and found that specic fuel consumption rates of the tested
biodiesels were higher than that of petroleum based diesel fuel by
7.45% and 6.18% respectively. According to them, that kind of
behavior was due to the higher density, which resulted in higher
amount (mass basis) of biodiesel injection in the combustion
chamber for the production of same amount of power output.
Also, poorer atomization slowed down the fuelair mixture formation rate due to the higher kinematic viscosity of biodiesel.
Agarwal and Dhar [60] used neat karanja oil and preheated
karanja oil for their experimental study. It was reported by them
that higher viscosity of karanja oil caused poorer atomization and
increased the fuel consumption compared to diesel. It was also
reported that the viscosity of the oil reduced due to preheating of
the karanja oil, which resulted better atomization and combustion,
thus the fuel consumption rate was found to be less than that of
normal karanja oil. The increments of fuel consumption rate were
found to be approximately 39% and 17% respectively for nonpreheated straight vegetable oil of karanja and preheated karanja
oil. Song and Zhang [67] experimented on a four cylinder, four
stroke, supercharged, direct injection diesel engine with soybean
oil methyl ester. It was observed that lower caloric value and
higher density of soybean oil methyl ester caused a higher amount
of biodiesel supply (by weight) to the combustion chamber due to
higher discharge of fuel injection pump and resulted in higher
BSFC value than mineral diesel.
McCarthy et al. [82] conducted an experimental study on a
vertical, liquid cooled diesel engine and found an increase in BSFC
of about 7% and 10% compared to that of diesel respectively for the
mixture of animal tallow (80%)-canola oil methyl ester (20%) and
chicken tallow (70%)-waste cooking oil methyl ester (30%). This
was attributed to the lower caloric value or energy content of
biodiesel. Ceviz et al. [68] experimented with hazelnut oil methyl
ester (biodiesel) as CI engine fuel and reported that brake specic
fuel consumption increased for B100 blend approximately by 12%
and decreased for B20 blend by 8.2% compared to diesel. This kind
of behavior was thought to be due to better combustion with B20.
But caloric value of the fuel decreased by a large amount when
B100 was used and this was not compensated even by the
improved combustion of the fuel. Aksoy [83] experimented on a
single cylinder, four stroke, air cooled diesel engine with a precombustion chamber using waste frying oil methyl ester and
soybean oil methyl ester. Due to the lower caloric value of biodiesels produced from raw soybean and waste frying oil the specic fuel consumption increased by an average of 18.5% and 14.2%
respectively compared to mineral diesel.
Rao et al. [61] also found the similar trend with jatropha biodiesel. The increment in BSFC was noted to be marginal in case of
jatropha biodiesel. Ycesu and lkili [84] experimented on a single cylinder, four stroke, direct injection, air cooled Lombardini
engine using cotton seed oil methyl ester and found about 8%
higher fuel consumption of biodiesel compared to diesel. This was
mainly because of the higher mass and lower caloric value of the
ester which resulted in higher volume of fuel accumulation during
combustion of biodiesel than that of diesel. Yadav and Singh [85]
also reported an increment of brake specic fuel consumption
during experimentation on a single cylinder, four stroke diesel
engine with jatropha, karanja and neem biodiesels because of
their lower energy content approximately by 10% than diesel. In
case of a lower amount blend of karanja oil methyl ester (B15 and
B20), a reverse trend was observed by Mahanta et al. [59] during
an experimental study on a water cooled, direct injection, four
stroke diesel engine. It was reported by them that due to 10%
higher oxygen content of biodiesel it exhibited better combustion
characteristics and hence the fuel consumption with B15 and B20
blended fuels was approximately 14% lower at full load condition
compared to diesel.
Deore and Jahagirdar [66] observed that with jatropha biodiesel at compression ratio 18 and lower load, the specic fuel consumption was lower than diesel by 9.61% and at higher load it was
higher than diesel by 3.57%. It was also observed that specic fuel
consumption was lower than diesel by 6% at lower load and higher
than diesel by 5% at higher load corresponding to a compression
807
and the maximum exhaust temperature with B100 rapeseed biodiesel was found to be approximately 490 C, whereas the corresponding value with diesel fuel was noted to be 475 C running at
a relatively high speed of 2100 rpm. Datta et al. [88] experimented
on a double cylinder, four stroke, diesel engine fueled with jatropha oil methyl ester and its blends with diesel. They observed an
increase in exhaust gas temperature with jatropha oil methyl ester
and its blends due to the higher ame temperature of jatropha
biodiesel compared to that with diesel.
Puhan et al. [75] conducted an experimental study on a four
stroke, compression ignition, constant speed, vertical, water
cooled, direct injection diesel engine using mahua oil methyl ester
as fuel. It was reported by them that exhaust gas temperature of
methyl ester of mahua oil was higher than that of mineral diesel
approximately by 3.7%. They identied the longer duration of after
burning period to be responsible for higher exhaust gas temperature. Behet [86] observed an increment of exhaust gas temperature approximately by 12% compared to that of diesel when
fueled with anchovy sh biodiesel during experimentation on a
single cylinder direct injection diesel engine at a constant speed of
3600 rpm. The possible reason of higher exhaust gas temperature
with anchovy sh biodiesel might be the higher oxygen content of
it, which led to better combustion. This increased combustion
temperature as well as the exhaust temperature. Higher viscosity
and density of biodiesel were also identied by the author as
inuencing parameters for increase of exhaust gas temperature. In
an experimental investigation, Banapurmath et al. [62] observed
that the exhaust gas temperature increased with marotti oil
methyl ester (biodiesel) compared to diesel. They explained the
above fact on the basis of the poor volatility, high viscosity and the
slower combustion of marotti oil methyl ester.
Reverse trend was also observed by Kegl [89] while experimenting
on a four stroke, six cylinder, in line, water cooled bus engine with
rapeseed biodiesel. This type of behavior might be due to the low
heating value of biodiesel as reported in this study. Lin et al. [44]
experimented on a single cylinder, four stroke, water cooled, direct
injection diesel engine with various kinds of biodiesels prepared from
eight different oils namely, soybean, peanut, corn, sunower, rapeseed,
palm, palm kernel and waste fried oil using methanol as alcohol
during transesterication. They observed that the exhaust gas temperatures with those biodiesels were slightly lower than that with
diesel. It was reported by them that the lower energy content of those
biodiesels reduced total heat release during combustion and hence the
exhaust gas temperature reduced. Sureshkumara et al. [90] experimented on a single cylinder, four stroke, water cooled diesel engine at
a constant speed of 1500 rpm with karanja oil methyl ester. They
reported a lower exhaust gas temperature for karanja oil methyl ester
ratio of 16. On the other hand, the increase in BSFC with jatropha
biodiesel was more at compression ratio 14 and it was about 29%
higher than diesel. In case of karanja biodiesel, the specic fuel
consumption was higher than jatropha biodiesel by about 11 to
30% for different compression ratios at low loads. The authors
pointed out that the differences in density and viscosity among
different biodiesel and diesel were responsible for this kind of
behavior.
At the end of this section, it can be said that except a few,
almost all the studies showed an increase of BSFC in the range of
515% for different biodiesels. For further illustration and comparison experimental results from the work of Puhan et al. [75]
and Sharon et al. [27] have been plotted in Fig. 5(a) and
(b) respectively for mahua and used palm oil biodiesels.
It can be seen from both the gures that the specic fuel
consumption rates of both the biodiesels are higher than that of
diesel over the entire load range. The maximum increase in BSFC
noted are not to be 20% and 14.55% with mahua and used palm oil
biodiesel respectively.
3.3. Effect on exhaust gas temperature
Exhaust gas temperature is an indicator of the heat release rate
of the tested fuel during combustion period [86] and its effective
utilization to produce power. It depends on the nature of combustion and the heat loss to the exhaust which again depends on
the fuel consumption rate. The higher fuel consumption rate
results higher amount of heat rejection, which causes higher
exhaust gas temperature [41]. Generally, the fuel consumption
with biodiesel is higher than that with diesel and also the combustion is improved due to the presence of excess oxygen in the
fuel itself. These set the general trend of increased exhaust gas
temperature with biodiesel fuels.
Godiganur et al. [38] experimented on a Cummins made six
cylinder turbocharged diesel engine using diesel, mahua oil
methyl ester and its blends with diesel as fuels. They observed an
increase in exhaust gas temperature with the increase in engine
load. The exhaust gas temperature was found to increase with the
percentage increase of biodiesel in the blended fuel. The mean EGT
of the engine with neat mahua oil methyl ester was noted to be
nearly 12% higher than that with diesel. The trend was due to
more heat loss with biodiesel as explained by Godiganur and coresearchers. Buyukkaya [87] experimentally investigated the
effects of rapeseed biodiesel and its blends with diesel on engine
performance, emission and combustion of a six cylinder turbocharged diesel engine. They reported that with increase in biodiesel share in the blended fuel the exhaust temperature increased
1.4
Diesel
Mahua Biodiesel
Diesel
Used Palm Biodiesel
0.7
0.6
1.0
BSFC (kg/kWh)
BSFC (kg/kWh)
1.2
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.0
0.2
0
Brake Power (kW)
Brake Power (kW)
Fig. 5. Effect of different biodiesels on brake specic fuel consumption.
808
compared to that of diesel. Oxygenated nature of the biodiesel which

led to more complete combustion was held responsible for this kind of
variation.
On the other hand, Raheman and Phadatare [41] reported that
there was no such signicant change in exhaust gas temperature
between karanja oil methyl ester and diesel due to nearly same
amount of heat loss at the exhaust.
To summarize the variation of exhaust gas temperature from
biodiesel fueled CI engines, some results related to exhaust gas
temperature from two different experimental works carried out by
Puhan et al. [75] and Datta et al. [88] are presented in Fig. 6(a) and
(b) respectively and discussed.
Fig. 6(a) and (b) clearly show that the exhaust gas temperatures
using mahua biodiesel and jatropha biodiesel as fuels are higher
than those with diesel under the same operating condition.
experimental studies suggests that it will be benecial and wise if

biodieseldiesel blends having 1020% biodiesel are used with
little sacrice in the performance of the engine.
4. Effect of biodiesel on engine emissions

The increased use of fossil fuels in the form of diesel and petrol,
particularly in the automobile sector and the continuously growing emission of harmful pollutants from the tail pipe of engines are
largely responsible for several diseases and fast degradation of the
global environment. The hydrocarbon emitted from the exhaust of
the automobiles forms ground-level ozone which is the major
component of smog. Ozone affects human beings causing lung
decease, eye irritation and respiratory problems. Hence, it is now
almost mandatory for any fuel to be used as automobile fuel to
meet the stringent emission norms set by the different regulating
authorities throughout the world. Keeping this in mind, the
emissions from different biodiesel fueled CI engines have been
critically reviewed and summarized based on the diversied
works reported in the literature. The major pollutants from the
engine exhaust that have been identied and considered for this
review work are CO, CO2, NOx, hydrocarbon and smoke. The effect
of biodiesel addition to diesel in different proportions on the
above said emissions from CI engines has been presented and
discussed in the next few sections.
3.4. Summary of performance analysis

The performance related information under normal operating
conditions as observed by several researchers with different biodiesels and their blends with diesel have been summarized and
presented in Table 4. The increase and decrease in different performance parameters as shown in the above mentioned table are
with respect to mineral diesel only.
It can be noted from the table that brake thermal efciency
decreases in most of the cases by around 10% for neat biodiesel
(B100). The decrease is marginal in case of B10 and B20 blends.
The decrease is much more with straight vegetable oil. The BSFC
increases by more than 10% for neat biodiesel. The exhaust gas
temperature is normally higher with biodiesel and its blends with
diesel. The maximum decrease in brake thermal efciency is noted
to be 27% with karanja biodiesel. On the other hand, the maximum
increase of brake specic fuel consumption is found to be 38.3%
with neat mahua biodiesel. A 20% increase of exhaust gas temperature with neat jatopha biodiesel is reported to be highest
among all the studies reviewed in this work. The opposite trend,
i.e., increase in brake thermal efciency and decrease in BSFC as
well as exhaust gas temperature are also found in few cases.
Brake thermal efciency of an engine depends upon the
properties of the fuel such as lower heating value (caloric value),
viscosity and density. In case of neat biodiesel or dieselbiodiesel
blended fuels, caloric value of the fuel is less compared to that of
neat diesel and viscosity and density are higher. The decrease in
lower heating value is mainly responsible for the higher BSFC in
case of biodiesel. This higher fuel consumption and the improvement in combustion due to the oxygen enrichment with biodiesel
result in higher exhaust gas temperatures. The analysis of all the
4.1. Effect on CO emission

Carbon monoxide (CO) is produced by the incomplete combustion of carbon-containing substances. The carbon present in
any fuel is converted to CO2 and CO (product of incomplete combustion) during burning of fuel in the presence of oxygen within
the engine cylinder. It is obvious that the emissions of CO2 and CO
are interrelated i.e., if CO2 emission increases then CO emission
decreases naturally. It is expected that CO emission will decrease
with the increasing biodiesel percentage in the biodieselmineral
diesel blends as biodiesel itself contains 11% oxygen in its molecules. Some of the previous experimental works on the effect on
CO emission while using biodiesel and dieselbiodiesel blends as
fuel for compression ignition engine have been presented and
analyzed in this section.
The effect of adding mahua oil methyl ester to diesel on the
engine emission was studied by Godiganur et al. [38]. It was
observed that CO emission decreased with diesel/biodiesel blends
due to more complete oxidation of biodiesel than that of diesel.
Some of the CO formed during combustion was further oxidized
340
Diesel
Mahua Biodiesel
250
Exhaust Gas Temperature ( C)
Exhasut Gas Temperature ( C)
300
200
150
100
50
Diesel
Jatropha Biodiesel
320
300
280
260
240
220
0
0
Brake Power (kW)
Brake Power (kW)
Fig. 6. Effect of different biodiesels on exhaust gas temperature.
809
Table 4
Performances of different biodiesel fueled engines compared to diesel at normal operating condition.
Name of researchers
Biodiesel and it blends
BTE
BSFC
Godiganur et al. [38]
Mahua oil; B20, B40, B60, B100
decrease
increase
Raheman and Phadatare

[41]
Karanja oil; B20, B40, B60, B80, B100
Lin et al. [44]
Soybean oil, peanut oil, corn oil, sunower oil,

rapeseed oil, palm oil, palm kernel oil and waste
fried oil; B100
Hazelnut kernel oil; B5, B20, B50, B100
Linseed oil; B100
Waste palm oil and canola oil; B100
Karanja oil; B15, B20
Neat and preheated karanja oil (SVO); 100% (neat)
Jatropha oil; B20, B40, B60, B80, B100
Marotti oil; B10, B15, B20, B100
Honge oil; B100
Not Mentioned; B100
Mahua oil; B20, B40, B60, B80, B100
increase for B20 and B40,

decrease for B60, B80 and
B100
increase 12% for

B100
No signicant
decrease 0.87.4% for B20 and
B40, increase 1148% for B60, B80 change
and B100
increase
decrease
decrease
decrease
decrease 1.42% and 0.12%
decrease 27%
decrease 45% and 25%
decrease
decrease
decrease
increase 10%
decrease 11.3% for B100
increase 22.66%
increase 9%
increase 7.45% and 6.18%
decrease 14%
increase 39% and 17%
increase
increase
increase 38.3% for B100
Jatropha and karanja oil; B100
increase 9.29% for jatropha
Soybean oil; B10, B20, B30, B50, B80, B100

Hazelnut oil; B20, B40, B60, B80, B100
increase
increase 12% for B20 and
decrease 1.5% B100
increase
decrease 9.61% at lower load and

3.57% at higher load for jatropha
increase
decrease 8.2% B20 and increase
12% for B100
decrease
decrease 0.34 for B20 and

increase 0.24 for B100
increase
decrease
increase
decrease
increase 2.9% for B20, increase

13.8% for B100
increase 13%
increase
increase 14.34%
increase
increase 13%
increase 11%
increase 17% for B100
increase 7% and 10%
decrease
increase 18.5% and 14.2%

increase 8%
increase
Gumus [56]
Puhan et al. [57]
Ozsezen et al. [58]
Mahanta et al. [59]
Agarwal and Dhar [60]
Rao et al. [61]
Banapurmath et al. [62]
Laforgia and Ardito [64]
Raheman and Ghadge
[65]
Deore and Jahagirdar
[66]
Song and Zhang [67]
Ceviz et al. [68]
Rath et al. [69]
Raheman and Ghadge
[70]
Canakci [71]
Zhu et al. [72]
Kong and Kimber [73]
An et al. [74]
Puhan et al. [75]
Utlua and Kocak [77]
Kaplan et al. [78]
Hasimoglu et al. [79]
Qi et al. [80]
Anand et al. [81]
McCarthy et al. [82]
Karanja oil; B5, B10, B15, B20, B30, B40, B50 and
B100
Mahua oil; B20, B40, B60, B80, B100
Soybean oil; B20, B100
Aksoy [83]
Ycesu and lkili [84]
Yadav and Singh [85]
Behet [86]
Waste cooking oil; B100

Neem oil; B10, B20, B100
Waste cooking oil; B10, B50, B100
Mahua oil; B100
Waste frying oil; B100
Sunower oil; B100
Rened sunower oil; B100
Soybean oil; B100
Waste cooking oil; B10, B20, B40, B80, B100
Animal tallow (80%)-canola oil methyl ester (20%)
and chicken tallow (70%)-waste cooking oil
methyl ester (30%)
Waste frying oil and soybean oil; B100
Cotton seed oil; B100
Jatropha, karanja and neem oil; B100
Waste anchovy sh oil; B25, B50, B75, B100
Buyukkaya [87]
Rapeseed oil; B5, B20, B70, B100
increase
Datta et al. [88]
decrease
increase
Kegl [89]
Sureshkumara et al. [90]
Rapeseed oil; B100

comparable
increase
increase
and converted to CO2 due to the presence of certain amount of

oxygen in biodiesel itself. It was also observed that CO emission
initially decreased with load and later on increased sharply upto
the full load. Nabi et al. [45] experimented on a single cylinder,
water cooled, naturally aspirated, four stroke, direct injection
diesel engine using cotton seed oil biodiesel and reported that CO
emission with biodiesel was lower than that of diesel fuel. In case
of B30 blend of cotton seed oil, CO emission was reduced by 24% in
comparison to neat diesel fuel. They also concluded that the oxidation process of CO to CO2 was enhanced due to the presence of
oxygen in biodiesel fuel.
Zou and Atkinson [91] carried out experiments on two vehicles,
namely Toyota Helix Utility with oxidation catalytic converter and
Volswagen Wolf without oxidation catalytic converter using canola
biodiesel. They used standard testing cycle of diesel engine for this
study. The Euro 2 drive cycle test was consisted of four urban
EGT
increase 64%
increase
increase
increase
increase 14% for

B100
increase
increase 16% for
B100
increase 3.7%
decrease 6.35%
decrease
decrease 12%
increase
increase 12% for
B100
increase 3% for
B100
increase 20% for
B100
decrease
decrease
driving cycle test with a maximum speed of 50 km/h and one urban
driving cycle test with a maximum speed of 120 km/h. The sampling time for the emission test was 1200 seconds. They observed a
narrow range of reduction (about 10%) of CO emission with biodiesel as compared to that of diesel. During a comparative study by
Rakopoulos et al. [43] on a four stroke, direct injection (DI), Ricardo/
Cussons Hydra Diesel engine with methyl esters of cottonseed oil,
soybean oil, sunower oil, rapeseed oil and palm oil blended with
diesel (10% and 20% blend), it was observed that CO emission was
slightly reduced with the use of biodiesel blends in comparison to
that of the neat diesel fuel. The maximum reduction was noted with
cotton seed biodiesel and it was approximately 14%.
It was observed by elikten et al. [46] that CO emission reduced
while using rapeseed and soybean oil methyl esters as fuels in a
four cylinder diesel engine. At higher injection pressure of 350 bar,
it was also observed that CO emission decreased by 21% and 28%
810
respectively for rapeseed and soybean biodiesel. Raheman and

Phadatare [41] observed a huge reduction of CO emission while
using karanja oil methyl ester and its blends with diesel instead of
mineral diesel. CO emission was found to be reduced by nearly 74%
when neat karanja biodiesel was used instead of mineral diesel.
Kegl [89] reported that more reduction in CO emission at tailpipe
using biodiesel was achieved by retarding the injection timing.
Randazzo and Sodr [92] experimented on a station wagon having
turbo-charged, four cylinder diesel engine of compression ratio
17.6:1. The test vehicle was also equipped with a platinumrhodium catalytic converter and exhaust gas recirculation valve to
reduce pollutant emissions and NOx respectively. The results
showed that addition of soybean biodiesel to diesel had little
inuence in lowering CO emission. But the addition of ethanol
increased the CO emission signicantly. The possible reason
behind this increment was the higher latent heat of vaporization
of ethanol, which led to a reduction of combustion temperature
and resulted in decrease of oxidation rate of CO into CO2.
Lin et al. [93] experimented on a Cummins direct injection
heavy duty diesel engine having compression ratio of 17.9:1 at
constant injection pressure of 250 bar and injection timing of 12.3
bTDC with waste cooking oil biodiesel. They reported decrease of
CO emission by 3.33% to 13.1% with the use of different blends (B5B30) of the above said biodiesel and ultra low sulfur diesel. Yoon
and Lee [94] experimented on a four cylinder, turbocharged diesel
engine and employed both single fuel and dual fuel mode with
biogas and biodiesel. In both the conditions, the CO concentration
was found to be lower with biodiesel due to 11% higher oxygen
content of biodiesel. This led to complete combustion resulting
lower CO emission.
In an experimental study on a four cylinder, inline turbocharged diesel engine with intercooler using karanja biodiesel and
its blend with methanol as fuels, it was observed by Anand et al.
[42] that CO emission was approximately 46.5% lower at higher
load for biodieselmethanol blend compared to neat biodiesel. The
more complete combustion due to the oxygen enrichment with
methanol blending was found to be the reason for this kind of
behavior. Nabi et al. [50] experimented on a single cylinder four
stroke diesel engine with diesel and its blends with neem biodiesel. They observed a 4% reduction of CO emission in case of
dieselneem biodiesel blends compared to that of conventional
diesel fuel. In another experimental study by Datta et al. [88]
observed that, in case of jatropha oil methyl ester and its blends,
the CO emission was reduced by 24% compared to diesel. It was
also reported by them that, due to more complete combustion, CO
was decreased with biodiesel and its blends. Also, the presence of
oxygen in biodiesel and higher combustion temperature set
favorable conditions for oxidation of CO to CO2.
It was also observed by Puhan et al. [75,95] during experimental studies on Kirloskar made single cylinder, four stroke
diesel engine fueled with mahua oil alkyl esters that the higher
oxygen content (about 1012%) of mahua oil methyl and ethyl
esters enhanced the combustion process and thus oxidized the CO
into CO2. It was reported that the difference in cetane number, and
energy content of biodiesel and petro-diesel were also responsible
for this kind of behavior. The reduction in CO emission with mahua
biodiesel was reported to be approximately 6779% compared to
that of diesel. Puhan and Nagarajan [96] experimented on the
same test rig and also observed the same trend for mahua oil ethyl
esters. Similar type of behavior was observed with cotton seed oil
methyl ester by Aydin and Bayindir [97] while using the biodiesel
on a single cylinder, direct injection, four stroke, water cooled
diesel engine. Gumus and Kasifoglu [98] experimented on a
Lombardini single cylinder diesel engine using apricot seed kernel
oil methyl ester and its blends with diesel as fuels. A reduction of
CO emission was observed by them and they concluded that the
reduction in CO emission was mainly due to oxygen content of

biodiesel which improved the combustion process. Behet [86]
also observed a reduction in CO emission while using waste
anchovy sh biodiesel and the maximum reduction was found to
be 31.2%. Sureshkumara et al. [90] also reported that karanja biodiesel emitted lower amount of CO compared to diesel.
It was observed by Swaminathan and Sarangan [99] during an
experimental study on a Kirloskar made single cylinder, four
stroke, direct injection diesel engine, that the addition of diethylene glycol dimethyl ether to pongamia methyl ester (karanja
biodiesel) reduced CO emission. At full load condition, the reduction was observed to be 44%. The additives provided extra oxygen
to oxidize CO. Amarnath and Prabhakaran [100] experimented on
a Kirloskar made single cylinder, four stroke, water cooled diesel
engine using karanja oil methyl ester and also observed a reduction of CO emission. It was also pointed out by them that at higher
compression ratio the CO emission further reduced due to better
combustion. In addition, they tried to examine the effect of
injection pressure on CO emission and observed a reduction of it at
higher injection pressure. The availability of more surface area for
combustion of very ne droplets under this condition resulted to
almost complete combustion, which led to a less amount of CO at
tailpipe. Bayrakeken [101] experimented on a single cylinder, four
stroke, air cooled diesel engine fueled with crude and rened
soybean oil methyl ester. They observed that CO emission
decreased with both crude and rened soybean oil methyl ester by
11.98% and 6.96% respectively in comparison to that with mineral
diesel.
Venkata Subbaiah and Raja Gopal [102] experimented on a
single cylinder, four stroke, water cooled diesel engine with rice
bran oil biodiesel and ethanol blending with mineral diesel. They
reported that with rice bran oil biodiesel CO emission decreased
compared to that with diesel by 25.8%. Small amount of ethanol
addition to biodiesel decreased the CO emission compared to that
of biodiesel, but when the percentage of ethanol in the blends
became more than 7.5%, higher amount of CO emission was
observed than that with biodiesel. More complete combustion
with cotton seed oil methyl ester reduced the CO emission compared to that with diesel as observed by Aydin and Bayindir [103]
during their study on a Rainbow-186, direct injection, single
cylinder diesel engine. The same trend was noted by Ulusoy et al.
[104] and Sharma et al. [105] with sunower oil methyl ester and
neem biodiesel respectively. Ulusoy et al. [104] used a heavy duty
turbo diesel engine during the study whereas agri-genset engine
was used by Mathur et al. [105]. A signicant reduction (29%) in CO
emission was observed by Aydin and lkili [112] with rapeseed
methyl ester compared to that with diesel while experimenting on
a similar type of test engine as used by Aydin and Bayindir [103].
lkili [106] observed approximately 30% reduction in CO
emission from a Lombardini, single cylinder, air cooled diesel
engine under different injection pressures when sunower oil
methyl ester was used as fuel instead of diesel. Shirneshan [107]
experimented on a four cylinder, water cooled, heavy duty diesel
engine with waste frying oil methyl ester and reported that the CO
emission decreased with the addition of waste frying oil methyl
ester (biodiesel) to diesel. In another study by Ranganathan and
Sampath [108] on a four stroke, single cylinder, air cooled, direct
injection diesel engine with cotton seed oil biodiesel, it was found
that CO emission was approximately 26% less than that with neat
diesel. The extra oxygen available in the biodiesel molecule
enhanced the combustion process and reduced the CO emission as
mentioned by them. Rao et al. [114] also used cotton seed oil
biodiesel on a single cylinder, direct injection diesel engine and
found that CO emission decreased by 18% and 24% using B25 and
B100 blend of used cotton seed oil biodiesel respectively.
0.12
0.20
0.45
Diesel
Mahua Biodiesel
0.10
Diesel
Jatropha Biodiesel
0.40
Diesel
Used Palm Biodiesel
0.06
0.04
0.15
CO (% volume)
CO (% volume)
CO (% volume)
0.35
0.08
811
0.30
0.25
0.20
0.15
0.10
0.05
0.10
0.02
0.05
0.00
0.00
0.00
0
Brake Power (kW)
Brake Power (kW)
Brake Power (kW)
Fig. 7. Effect of different biodiesels on CO emission.
On the other hand, some researchers found some opposite

trend of CO emission with the use of different biodiesels. Sahoo
et al. [40] experimented on a three cylinder water cooled tractor
engine using jatopha, karanja and polanga based biodiesel for
three different engine speeds. They adopted the 8 mode test cycle
of ISO 8178 type C1 for conforming the Euro 2 standard. During
experimentation, they observed that CO emission increased gradually with blending of higher concentration of biodiesel to diesel
except karanja biodiesel. They indicated that the non-homogenous
nature of the blended fuels and the higher latent heat of vaporization resulted poorer combustion and hence more CO formation.
An air cooled, single cylinder, four stroke, DEUTZ F1L511, direct
injection diesel engine was employed by Huzayyin et al. [109] for
experimentation with mixture of jojoba oil and gas oil as fuel. They
observed that with the increase in jojoba oil percentage in the fuel
blend, CO emission increased. It was observed by Saleh [49] during
an experimental study on a two cylinder, four stroke, water cooled
diesel engine, that with the use of jojoba oil methyl ester as fuel
increased the CO emission compared to that of diesel due to the
higher viscosity of biodiesel which led to poorer atomization and
poorer distribution of airfuel mixture.
Pugazhvadivu and Jeyachandran [110] observed an increment
in CO emission using waste frying oil (without preheating) as fuel
on a Kirloskar made single cylinder diesel engine. The increment
was attributed to the higher viscosity of waste frying oil, which led
to poorer combustion and formation of locally rich airfuel mixture zone and thus, suitable condition for CO formation was created. Heavier molecular structure and higher viscosity of honge,
jatropha and sesame oil methyl esters led to poor atomization and
resulted to a higher CO emission for biodiesel compared to diesel
as observed by Banapurmath et al. [76] during an experimental
study on a Kirloskar made single cylinder, variable compression
ratio, computerized diesel engine.
Baiju et al. [39] conducted an experimental study on a single
cylinder, four stroke, naturally aspirated, constant speed compression ignition engine using blends of karanja oil methyl ester
and ethyl ester with diesel. With karanja oil methyl ester, it was
observed that at lower loads, CO emissions did not vary much for
all fuels considered by them. However, at full load, higher CO
emissions were observed with B20 blend of karanja oil ethyl ester
than any other blends of methyl ester due to the enrichment of
oxygen which resulted in better combustion with methyl ester of
karanja oil. Tsolakis et al. [111] conducted an experimental study
on a Lister-Petter TR1 naturally aspirated, air cooled, single cylinder direct injection diesel engine. They also employed exhaust gas
recirculation technique by adding different percentages of exhaust
gas to the intake air mainly to reduce NOx in the tailpipe. But, in
case of CO emission, the effect was found to be detrimental. They

observed that rapeseed oil methyl ester emitted less amount of CO
than that of diesel in normal and 10% EGR conditions, but there
was practically no variation in CO emission between mineral diesel
and biodiesel in the case of 20% EGR. The possible reason for less
CO emission in the rst two cases was the oxygen enrichment
during the time of combustion by means of oxygenated fuels
(biodiesels). However, at 20% EGR, this effect was compensated
due to the dilution effect of the exhaust gas recirculation.
At the end of this section, the authors like to compare some
results on CO emission from CI engines using neat biodiesel and
neat diesel as fuels from the previous works of Puhan et al. [75],
Banapurmath et al. [76] and Sharon et al. [27]. It may be noted that
similar type of engine setup was used in the above said three
studies and the corresponding results on CO emissions have been
presented in Fig. 7(a)(c) respectively.
It is reected from Fig. 7(a) and (c) that the emission of CO is
lower with mahua and used palm biodiesel than that with diesel
at all loads conditions. The maximum reduction is found to be 30%
and 52.9% for mahua and used palm biodiesel respectively. On the
other hand, the emission of CO with jatropha biodiesel reported by
Banapurmath et al. [76] is higher than that with diesel at all loads
as shown in Fig. 7(c). The maximum increment is found to be
37.77% at full load condition. Poor atomization characteristics of
jatropha biodiesel due to its higher viscosity resulted in improper
mixing of biodiesel with air and led to higher CO emission. Also,
form the gures it is observed that, in general, the CO emission
increases with load. At the end of the review of CO emissions from
biodiesel fueled engines, it is observed that CO emissions from CI
engines decrease with biodiesel fuels in most of the cases. However, a few studies show even the increase of CO emission to some
extent with certain specied biodiesels under certain operating
conditions.
4.2. Effect on CO2 emission
It is well-known that complete combustion inside the combustion chamber helps in increasing CO2 (carbon dioxide) emission rapidly. Although there is no possibility of occurring complete
combustion, but it may be nearly complete combustion depending
upon the engine operating conditions and the fuel used for running the engine. Most of the researches have measured CO2
emissions along with CO emission to nd a correlation between
them. CO emission has been described just in the previous section
and this section is devoted to CO2 emission. In most of the cases,
the operating conditions and engine used to study the CO2
812
emissions have already been described in the previous section of

CO emission.
It was observed by Godiganur et al. [38] and Nabi et al. [45] that
the presence of excess oxygen in mahua biodiesel and cotton seed
oil biodiesel respectively resulted better combustion, which
helped to convert CO into CO2 and thus CO2 emission increased.
Fontaras et al. [47] while experimenting on new European driving
cycle observed that during cold start, tailpipe CO2 emission from
an automobile increased by 14% for B100 and 9% for B50 blend of
soybean biodiesel. But, for Artemis driving cycles, it was noted that
B50 blend had no impact on CO2 emission and for B100 it
increased only slightly. Randazzo and Sodr [92] used soybean
biodiesel upto maximum of 20% (B20) and observed that CO2
emission increased with the increase of biodiesel content in diesel
biodiesel blends. It was also reported by them that small percentages of ethanol addition to B20 blend reduced CO2 emission
substantially.
Huzayyin et al. [109] observed that with the increase in jojoba
oil percentage in the blended fuel, CO2 emission increased. In an
experimental study on the emissions from dual fuel engine using
soyabean oil methyl ester as one of the fuel, Yoon and Lee [94]
observed more CO2 emission with biodiesel. They explained that
oxygen present in biodiesel allowed CO to oxidize into CO2. They
also commented that the life cycle CO2 emission was less with
soyabean biodiesel than that of diesel fuel as soyabean plants
absorbed CO2 during harvesting through the process of photosynthesis. Puhan et al. [75] and Puhan and Nagarajan [96] also
observed the same trend of increased CO2 emissions with methyl
ester of mahua oil and ethyl ester of mahua oil respectively.
Amarnath and Prabhakaran [100] observed that with the use of
karanja biodiesel CO2 emission increased. They also concluded that
higher oxygen content of karanja biodiesel was responsible for
more CO2 emission and less CO emission. Venkata Subbaiah and
Raja Gopal [102] also reported a higher CO2 emission with rice
bran oil biodiesel. They also noticed that when small amount of
ethanol was added to biodiesel, a further increase of CO2 emission
was observed because of the presence of oxygen in ethanol
molecules.
On the other hand, Gumus and Kasifoglu [98] observed that
apricot seed kernel oil methyl ester emitted lower amount of CO2
compared to that of diesel when used in CI engine. They concluded
that the scarcity of air in the mixture formation slowed down the
combustion process and thus decreased the formation of CO2. The
decrease of CO2 emission with biodiesel fuels was also observed by
Behet [86]. Sureshkumara et al. [90] also reported a reduction in
CO2 emission for karanja biodiesel. On the basis of the experimental study already mentioned in the previous section,
Swaminathan and Sarangan [99] observed a reduction of carbon

dioxide emission in the range of 28% with the use of diethylene
glycol dimethyl additive with pongamia methyl ester. A reduction
in CO2 by 16% was observed by Aydin and lkili [112] with B20
blend of rapeseed methyl ester compared to diesel. With sunower oil methyl ester, it was observed by lkili [106] that sunower biodiesel produced less CO2 at all conditions. Lower CO2
emission was explained by him in the following manner. Biodiesel
is a low carbon fuel and has a lower elemental carbon to hydrogen
ratio than diesel fuel which leads to a lower CO2 emission. Shirneshan [107] found that for waste frying oil methyl esterdiesel
blended fuel, CO2 emission decreased compared to that with diesel. However, at higher concentration of biodiesel in the blended
fuels, CO2 emission increased but still remained lower than that
with neat diesel. zcanli et al. [113] noted a decrease in CO2
emission with increase in castor biodiesel content in the blended
fuel and the most probable reason behind this was reported to be
the lower elemental carbon to hydrogen ratio in the biodiesel
investigated. Rao et al. [114] also reported a reduction of CO2
emission from CI engine with the use of cotton seed oil biodiesel.
But, Zou and Atkinson [91] reported that CO2 emission remained
almost same for both 100% canola biodiesel and 100% petroleum
diesel.
On the basis of the review and analysis of the reports available
in the literature on CO2 emissions from CI engines using different
kinds of biodiesel and diesel blends, two types of opposite trends
have been identied. Quite a large number of studies showed
increase of CO2 emissions due to the improved combustion utilizing the oxygen present in the biodiesel fuel itself. On the other
hand, substantial number of experimental investigations also
reported reduction of carbon dioxide in the exhaust gas from
biodiesel fueled engines. The lower elemental carbon to hydrogen
ratio in the molecular structure of biodiesel can be identied to be
the possible reason to lower the CO2 emission. Accordingly, two
results of opposite nature from the experimental works of Sharon
et al. [27] and Gumus and Kasifoglu [98] are presented in Fig. 8
(a) and (b) respectively for illustration.
It is quite evident from Fig. 8(a), that the CO2 emission of used
palm biodiesel is higher than that with diesel at all loads and a
maximum increase is noted to be 8.76%. However, the reverse type
of trend is observed in Fig. 8(b) with apricot seed kernel biodiesel
and the maximum reduction is noted to be 10.88%. Theoretical
investigation shows that the emission of CO2 from CI engines
should increase with biodiesel addition to diesel fuel because of
improved combustion due to the presence of oxygen in the
molecular structure of biodiesel. However, the lower elemental
carbon to hydrogen ratio in biodiesel will tend to decrease the CO2
emissions. The nal emission level of CO2 from CI engines using
0.07
Diesel
Apricot seed kernel Biodiesel
Diesel
Used Palm Biodiesel
0.06
CO2 (kg/MJ)
CO2 (% by volume)
0.05
0.04
0.03
0.02
2
0
Brake Power (kW)
Brake Power (kW)
Fig. 8. Effect of different biodiesels on CO2 emission.
biodiesels as fuels will be decided on the relative inuence of

those two opposite effects and this can only be answered from
experimental studies.
4.3. Effect on NOx emission
Mainly two oxides of nitrogen, namely, nitric oxide (NO) and
nitrogen dioxide (NO2) are formed due to the oxidation of nitrogen
present in the intake air during the combustion process. These
oxides of nitrogen were found in the exhaust emissions and are
together referred to as NOx. The amount of NOx formed, mostly
depends on the combustion temperature, the oxygen concentration and residence time of the combustion product gases inside
the high temperature zone within the engine cylinder. If the
combustion temperature becomes more than 1200 C, NOx is
formed within the engine cylinder and it is emitted with the
exhaust gas. Several studies on NOx formation in CI engine using
biodiesel blended fuels have been briey presented and
discussed below.
Godiganur et al. [38] reported that the NOx emission increased
by 11.6% compared to diesel while using neat mahua oil methyl
ester. According to them, the better combustion characteristics of
mahua biodiesel over neat petro-diesel increased the in-cylinder
pressure and temperature and enhanced NOx formation. Baiju
et al. [39] observed from their experimental investigation that NOx
emissions from the engine using karanja biodiesel/diesel blends
and neat karanja biodiesel were higher than that using diesel at
part load condition. However, NOx emission was found to be
higher for diesel compared to biodiesel at loads close to the
maximum load. They have also noted that biodiesel prepared from
karanja oil using ethyl alcohol emitted more NOx than methyl ester
of karanja oil under the same operating conditions. Nabi et al. [45]
reported about 10% increase in NOx emission using biodiesel as
fuel instead of neat mineral diesel. It was also suggested by them
that the reduction of NOx with biodiesel might be possible with
the proper adjustment of injection timing and introducing exhaust
gas recirculation (EGR) technique.
Sahoo et al. [40] observed that the presence of oxygen molecule
in polanga biodiesel caused an increase in combustion gas temperature which resulted in an increase in NOx emission. Celikten
et al. [46] observed no signicant change in NOx emission at lower
engine speeds, but the emission was found to be more with biodiesel compared to mineral diesel at higher engine speeds. An
increase in NOx emissions with rapeseed and soybean oil methyl
esters were noted to be 12.7% and 20% respectively at an injection
pressure of 250 bar. It was also reported that NOx emission
increased with the increase in injection pressure for all tested fuels
including neat diesel. The corresponding increase of NOx emission
were reported to be 26%, 21% and 20% respectively for pure diesel,
neat rapeseed and neat soyabean biodiesel when the injection
pressure was increased from 250 bar to 350 bar. A higher NOx
emission with rapeseed biodiesel was observed by Buyukkaya
[87]. The increases in NOx emissions were found to be 6%, 9% and
12% with B20, B70 and B100 blends of rapeseed biodiesel with
diesel respectively. However, the NOx emission decreased with
increase of speed for all the blended fuels. The increase in volumetric efciency of the engine, faster mixing of the fuel and air
and shortened ignition delay at higher speeds were indicated to be
the possible reasons for this. Kegl [89] reported an increase in NOx
emission while using rapeseed biodiesel instead of mineral diesel.
He also observed that by retarding the injection timing, NOx
emission with biodiesel could be brought down below the emission level noted with mineral diesel. Soltic et al. [115] reported
that NOx emissions decreased when GTL was used, but the use of
oxygenated fuels such as RME, neat soybean and rapeseed oils
increased it to some extent. Yoon and Lee [94] reported the NOx
813
concentration increased with the addition of soyabean biodiesel to

mineral diesel for all the test conditions due to relatively high
temperature prevailing in the ame zone and the maximum
increase was noted to be 15% at full load.
Lin et al. [44] experimented on a diesel engine with biodiesel
prepared from various feedstocks such as soyabean, palm, sunower, rapeseed and waste fried oil and found an increase in NOx
emission compared to petroleum diesel due to the higher pressure
and temperature attained during their combustion. The maximum
increase in NOx emission was noted to be 25.97% with rapeseed
biodiesel and minimum with palm kernel biodiesel (5.58%). It was
observed by Saleh [49] that the NOx emission increased with the
decrease in engine speed as well as increase in biodiesel mass
fraction in the fuel. The maximum increase was found to be 16% at
1600 rpm. He also employed exhaust gas recirculation technique
and observed 50% reduction in NOx emission. The excess oxygen
content increased the NOx emission from the diesel engine with
neem oil methyl esterdiesel blend compared to diesel, as
observed by Nabi et al. [50]. They also reported a substantial
amount of reduction in NOx emission with the use of EGR technique, particularly for B15 blend. In another study by Datta et al.
[88], an increase of NOx by an amount of 24% was found when
jatropha biodiesel was used instead of mineral diesel. Gumus and
Kasifoglu [98] used apricot seed kernel oil methyl ester as fuel and
noted an increase in NOx emission by 10% with B100 blend compared to diesel. They commented that the higher oxygen content,
the higher peak pressure, the higher combustion temperature and
combustion duration were responsible for higher NOx emission
with biodiesel.
In case of anchovy sh biodiesel, Behet [86] observed that the
NOx emission of biodiesel was slightly higher compared to diesel
because of higher oxygen content of biodiesel. With methyl ester
of paradise oil, it was observed by Devan and Mahalakshmi [116]
that the presence of oxygen in biodiesel molecules and a shorter
ignition delay for biodiesel advanced the start of combustion and
led to higher NOx emission. The emissions were reported to be
higher by 5% and 8%, respectively with B50 and B100 blends of
methyl ester of paradise oil. It was observed by Swaminathan and
Sarangan [99] that the addition of oxygenative additive (diethylene glycol dimethyl ether) to karanja biodiesel reduced NOx
emission by 31%. Amarnath and Prabhakaran [100] reported that
the more oxygen content of karanja biodiesel led to a higher NOx
emission in general. The oxygen of fuel reacted with nitrogen of
fresh air and formed nitric oxide and other oxides of nitrogen were
mainly responsible for higher NOx emission. The higher the compression ratio and injection pressure, more oxygen was available
under favorable condition which caused higher NOx emission.
It was reported by Venkata Subbaiah and Raja Gopal [102] that
higher oxygen content of rice bran oil biodiesel resulted in higher
NOx emission in their experimental investigation. The increase was
found to be 4%, but small quantity of ethanol addition to cottonseed biodiesel reduced NOx emission by 9.4%. Aydin and lkili
[112] reported that the higher oxygen content of rapeseed biodiesel and the resulting higher combustion temperature led to
higher amount of NOx formation compared to diesel. They found
an increase of NOx emission by 16.7% with B20 blend at medium
speed of 2000 rpm and 11.8% with B100 at higher speed of
3000 rpm. Shirneshan [107] found that NOx emission increased
with the use of waste frying oil methyl ester (biodiesel) blended
diesel fuels compared to neat diesel at all operating conditions.
The maximum increase was found to be 11.66%. zcanli et al. [113]
reported comparatively a higher increase (44.68%) in NOx emission
with castor biodiesel blended fuel compared to diesel. According
to them, better combustion utilizing the oxygen already present in
the fuel and enhanced combustion temperature as well as the incylinder temperature rise were responsible for higher NOx
814
formation. Ranganathan and Sampath [108] and Rao et al. [114]

used neat cotton seed oil biodiesel as fuels of CI engines and noted
an increase of NOx emission by 11% and 10% compared to diesel
respectively.
On the other hand, Zou and Atkinson [91] observed a 10%
reduction in NOx emission using canola biodiesel. Rakopoulos et al.
[43] also noticed different trends in NOx emission during their
experimental study with biodiesel produced from various feedstocks. The NOx emissions were slightly reduced with the use of
biodiesel or vegetable oil blends of various feedstocks compared to
that with neat diesel fuel. This reduction was higher with higher
percentage of biodiesel in the blend. An effective reduction of NOx
emission (around 26%) was reported by Raheman and Phadatare
[41] in their work with neat karanja biodiesel. The B20 blend of
karanja biodiesel and diesel showed the similar results with narrow range of variation with respect to mineral diesel. The average
value of NOx emissions from the two test fuels containing soyabean biodiesel (B50 and B100) during the New European and
Artemis driving cycles showed opposite trends as reported by
Fontaras et al. [47]. In case of B50, a reduction of 23% in NOx
emission was noted, whereas it increased by 69% for neat soyabean biodiesel. This was attributed to the fact that the thermal as
well as the uid properties of the blended fuel determined the
emission characteristics from the engine.
Huzayyin et al. [109] observed that NOx emission was reduced
while using jojoba oil methyl estergas oil blends with respect to
100% gas oil. The maximum reduction of NOx emission had been
observed at the rated engine speed of 1500 rpm. Pugazhvadivu
and Jeyachandran [110] observed a reduction in NOx emission
compared to conventional diesel using normal and preheated
waste frying oil as fuels. However, the reduction was found to be
less with preheated oil. Puhan et al. [75,95] also observed reduction in NOx emission while using methyl as well as ethyl esters of
mahua oil. The maximum reductions with respect to neat diesel
were found to be 9% and 27% respectively. In another experimental
study on the same engine, Puhan and Nagarajan [96] found an
average reduction of NOx emission by 12% with mahua oil ethyl
ester. Puhan and the co-workers opined that higher cetane number of methyl and ethyl esters was the main factor for this
reduction. The lower ignition delay period, which in turn reduced
the peak temperature during premixed combustion reduced the
possibility of thermal NO formation. Banapurmath et al. [76] also
found more NOx emission with diesel fuel compared to honge,
jatropha and sesame biodiesels. The maximum reduction was
observed with JOME and the minimum was with SOME. The corresponding values were noted to be 10.18% and 7.4% respectively.
Lower heat release rate of biodiesel and hence lower peak
temperature during combustion compared to diesel were thought

to be the probable reasons for this reduction. It was observed by
Bayrakeken [101] that NOx emission decreased with the addition
of both crude and rened soybean oil methyl ester by 20.5% and
20.1% respectively compared to that of diesel fuel. Aydin and
Bayindir [103] and Sharma et al. [105] experimented with cotton
seed and neem oil biodiesels and found a decrease in NOx emission
compared to normal diesel. lkili [106] observed 25% reduction in
NOx emission from the CI engine for different injection pressures
of 150 bar, 200 bar and 250 bar when fueled with sunower biodiesel instead of diesel.
In another study, Aydin and Bayindir [97] experimented with
different blends of cottonseed biodiesel and mineral diesel. They
observed maximum NOx emission with the use of B5 blends at
medium engine speed (around 1750 rpm). Tsolakis et al. [111] used
exhaust gas recirculation technique to reduce NOx emission signicantly from a rapeseed oil methyl ester fueled compression
ignition engine and the emission level became even less than that
from ultra low sulfur diesel fueled engine. The addition of ethanol
to soybean biodieselmineral diesel blended fuels reduced the NOx
emission as observed by Randazzo and Sodr [92]. Banapurmath
et al. [48] found that NOx emissions were lower for producer gas
diesel dual fuel operation compared to producer gashonge oil or
its methyl ester dual fuel operation due to availability of higher
oxygen in honge oil or its methyl ester molecular structure. It was
clearly observed that producer gas did not change the basic nature
of NOx emissions when added to diesel, vegetable oil or
biodiesel fuels.
The analysis of the different studies mentioned above shows
that NOx emissions are more with biodiesel in most of the cases.
However, some studies are also found where reductions in NOx
emission are reported under all load conditions or at certain load
range. For ready reference, some results regarding NOx emission
from the previous works of Godiganur et al. [38] and Puhan et al.
[75] are presented here in graphical form in Fig. 9(a) and
(b) respectively.
In both the studies, biodiesel prepared from mahua oil has been
used as fuel. From Fig. 9(a), it can be observed that the maximum
rise of NOx emission with biodiesel as fuel is noted to be 11.6%
higher than that with petro-diesel. On the other hand, 4% reduction in NOx can be noted in Fig. 9(b) for the same biodiesel.
4.4. Effect on HC emission
The emission of unburned hydrocarbon (HC) from engines
depends on the compositions and combustion characteristics of
the fuels used. If combustion is improved and shifts towards
completeness, then HC emission decreases and vice versa. Since
450
600
Diesel
Mahua Biodiesel
550
350
NOx (ppm)
500
NOx (ppm)
Diesel
Mahua Biodiesel
400
450
400
300
250
200
350
150
300
100
50
250
0
0
20
40
60
80
Brake Power (kW)
100
Brake Power (kW)
Fig. 9. Effect of different biodiesels on NOx emission.
biodiesel contains some amount of oxygen within its own structure, it is expected that HC emission will decrease with the use of
biodieseldiesel blended fuels and also with neat biodiesel. It may
also be noted that a few studies reported in the literature show
increase of HC emission to some extent with the use of biodiesel
blended fuels under certain operating conditions. Some of the
important studies reported in the literature regarding HC emissions from biodiesel fueled CI engines are described here along
with the ndings from those experimental investigations.
Godiganur et al. [38] observed a 32% reduction in HC emission
level with blends of methyl ester of mahua oil and diesel with
respect to neat diesel. Nabi et al. [45] reported that PM emission
with cotton seed oil biodiesel was lower than that with diesel fuel.
With B20 blend of cotton seed biodiesel, the PM emission was
reduced by 24%. A narrow range of reduction (about 10%) of HC
emission was observed with canola biodiesel by Zou and Atkinson
[91]. Sahoo et al. [40] mentioned that the excess oxygen helped to
reduce the emissions of HC and PM by improving combustion of
karanja, jatropha and polanga based biodiesel blends. The maximum reductions of HC were reported to be 20.64%, 20.73% and
6.75% with neat karanja, jatropha and polanga biodiesels respectively. The maximum reduction of PM in the exhaust was found to
be in the range of 40% for all the three tested fuels. Kegl [89]
reported that with the use of rapeseed biodiesel, HC emission
reduced by 25% compared to that with mineral diesel when
injection pump timing was retarded. Fontaras et al. [47] observed
that with soyabean biodiesel, HC emission increased (by 31% for
B50 blend and 58% for B100) for New European driving cycle, but
an average decrease of HC by 20% was noted for Artemis driving
cycle. Tsolakis et al. [111] noted that the use of neat rapeseed oil
methyl ester as fuel instead of ultra low sulfur diesel resulted to a
reduction of HC emission by nearly 50% and it increased slightly
when EGR technique was used.
Randazzo and Sodr [92] experimentally investigated the effect
of biodiesel and ethanol addition to diesel on HC and other
emissions. They observed a slight reduction of HC emission with
soybean biodieselmineral diesel blend. However, with the addition of ethanol to the blended fuel, the HC emission was found to
be more. Due to presence of higher amount of organic condensates
and volatile particles, the soot formation and PM emission were
more in case of RME, neat soybean and rapeseed oil as observed by
Soltic et al. [115]. In another experimental study with waste
cooking oil biodiesel by Lin et al. [93], it was observed that the use
of biodiesel instead of ultra low sulfur diesel reduced the PM and
HC emissions. The use of different blends of ultra low sulfur diesel
and waste cooking oil biodiesel as fuels decreased PM emission by
5.298.32% and HC by 10.536.0%. Lin et al. [44] observed that
when fueled with various vegetable oil methyl esters, THC emissions were low in case of VOME due to lower carbon and hydrogen
content compared to petroleum diesel. The maximum and minimum HC reductions of 33.14% and 22.47% were obtained with
PKOME and PNOME respectively.
Puhan and his co-workers [75,95,96] used different kinds of
mahua biodiesel and noted that the emission of HC was too low
for MOME and MOEE compared to diesel. The maximum reductions with methyl ester and ethyl ester of mahua oil were found to
be 60% and 63% respectively. It was mainly due to presence of
oxygen in the fuel, which enhanced the combustion process to
reduce exhaust emissions. Gumus and Kasifoglu [98], Sureshkumara et al. [90] and Devan and Mahalakshmi [116] experimented with biodiesels prepared from apricot kernel seed, karanja
and paradise oil respectively and reductions in HC emission were
observed in all the cases. Gumus and Kasifoglu [98] found HC
reductions of 18.66% with B100 and 2.66% with B5 blend of apricot
seed kernel oil methyl ester compared to neat diesel. Sureshkumara et al. [90] found almost zero HC emission except B20
815
blend of paradise biodiesel where small amount of HC was noted

at no load and full load conditions. The higher cetane number of
paradise biodiesel and the inherent oxygen in the biodiesel
molecules were identied as the factors for better combustion and
hence less HC emission. Swaminathan and Sarangan [99] observed
a reduction in HC emission in the range of 20 to 38% with the
addition of diethylene glycol dimethyl ether as oxygenative additive to karanja biodiesel. The reduction of HC was supposed to be
mainly due to the additive which acted as a catalyst and reduced
unburned HC. Amarnath and Prabhakaran [100] observed that
with the increase in karanja biodiesel percentage in the blended
fuel from 20% to 100%, HC emission was reduced by 50%. With the
increase in compression ratio and injection pressure, the HC
emission was found to be less due to the better combustion.
Venkata Subbaiah and Raja Gopal [102] reported that HC emission
decreased with rice bran oil biodiesel compared to diesel by 54%.
Ulusoy et al. [104] and Sharma et al. [105] observed 11.1% and
10.3% reductions in HC emission with sunower oil methyl ester
and neem biodiesel respectively compared to diesel. However,
Ulusoy et al. [104] pointed out that life cycle HC emission was
larger with biodiesel by 35% than diesel and most of the HC is
produced during agricultural processes. Shirneshan [107] found
that for waste frying oil methyl esterdiesel blended fuel, HC
emission became less than that of diesel and the reduction
increased with the increase of biodiesel percentage in the blended
fuel. The lower volatility of biodiesel can be a contributor to the
difference between the HC emission of diesel and waste frying oil
methyl esterdiesel blended fuel. Ranganathan and Sampath [108]
and Rao et al. [114] observed that cotton seed oil biodiesel produced lesser amount HC emission (reduction by 33% and 36%) due
to better combustion of biodiesel and promoted the oxidation
process in the fuel rich zones utilizing the oxygen present (nearly
1011%) in the fuel itself.
Banapurmath et al. [48] observed that the HC emission was
higher for producer gasdiesel dual fuel operations compared to
producer gasHOME operations. In case of karanja biodiesel, the
HC emissions were slightly higher for biodieselmethanol blends
compared to neat biodiesel at lower load conditions as observed
by Anand et al. [42].
On the other hand, with jojoba methyl ester, it was observed by
Saleh [49] that the HC emission was higher due to the increase in
the amount of fuel per stroke which led to improper mixing of fuel.
On the basis of experimental investigations, Banapurmath et al. [76]
observed an increase in HC emission while using honge, jatropha
and sesame oil methyl esters as fuels. The increments in HC emission were reported to be 60.49%, 65.43% and 48.14% respectively.
This was attributed to heavier molecular structure and higher
viscosity of the biodiesels which led to poor atomization.
During a comparative study by Rakopoulos et al. [43] using
biodiesels prepared from different origins such as cotton seed,
sunower, rapeseed and soyabean, it was noted that there was not
such mentionable variation of unburned hydrocarbon (HC) emission with respect to neat diesel. Buyukkaya [87] observed that
reduction in unburned HC emission was negligible for all the
blends of rapeseed biodiesel with respect to mineral diesel.
The nature of HC emission from biodiesel fueled CI engines can
now be summarized by mentioning that it decreases with the
biodiesels with a few exceptions also. This fact has been illustrated
by supplementing the results from the experimental investigations
of Puhan et al. [75], Banapurmath et al. [76] and Sharon et al. [27]
in Fig. 10(a)(c) respectively.
It is quite evident from Fig. 10(a) that the HC emission of neat
mahua biodiesel is lower than that of diesel and the maximum
reduction is observed to be 35%. On the other hand, the results
with biodiesel produced from jatropha oil as plotted in Fig. 10
(b) show the reverse trend. HC emission increases with the use of
816
80
100
Diesel
Mahua Biodiesel
70
Diesel
Used Palm Biodiesel
50
80
60
40
40
30
HC (ppm)
70
50
HC (ppm)
HC (ppm)
Diesel
Jatropha Biodiesel
90
60
50
40
20
30
20
30
10
20
10
0
10
Brake Power (kW)
Brake Power (kW)
Brake Power (kW)

Fig. 10. Effect of different biodiesels on HC emission.
Diesel
Mahua Biodiesel
Diesel
Used Palm Biodiesel
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
Diesel
Jatropha Biodiesel
80
Smoke Opacity (HSU)
60
Smoke Density (HSU)
3.5
Smoke Density (BSN)
90
70
4.0
50
40
30
70
60
50
40
30
20
20
0.5
10
0.0
10
0
Brake Power (kW)
Brake Power (kW)
Brake Power (kW)
Fig. 11. Effect of different biodiesels on smoke emission.
neat jatropha biodiesel as fuel. The maximum increment is

observed to be 65.43%. The reason behind this kind of behavior
may be the improper mixing of fuel and air which leads to an
incomplete combustion resulting higher HC emission. Fig. 10(c) is
basically showing a maximum reduction of 38.09% in HC emission
with used palm biodiesel. However, a slight increase of HC emission at low load is also observed. The increased gas temperature
and higher cetane number of biodiesel are the possible factors
responsible for the decrease in HC emission.
4.5. Effect on smoke emission
Smoke is formed due to the incomplete combustion of the fuel.
As discussed earlier, biodiesel contains some amount of oxygen in
its molecule which enhances the combustion process. As a consequence, the formation and the emission of smoke are likely to be
reduced when neat biodiesel or its blends with mineral diesel are
used as CI engine fuels.
Baiju et al. [39] observed that the presence of excess oxygen
content in karanja oil methyl ester led to better combustion and
resulted in less smoke formation for all load conditions of the
engine. The reduction was found to be nearly 52% compared to
diesel. They also reported that biodiesel produced using methanol
emitted less amount of smoke than biodiesel produced using
ethanol from the same karanja oil. Nabi et al. [45] reported a 14%
reduction in smoke emission using B10 blend of cotton seed biodiesel. Sahoo et al. [40] observed a signicant reduction of smoke
emission with jatropha, karanja and polanga based biodiesels as
fuels. Rakopoulos et al. [43] reported that smoke density was

considerably lowered with the use of biodiesels obtained from
various feedstocks compared to that noted with neat diesel fuel.
They found the maximum reduction of smoke with B20 blend of
cotton seed oil biodiesel among the tested biodiesels.
A considerable amount of reduction in smoke level was
observed by elikten et al. [46] using rapeseed and soyabean
biodiesels. It was also observed that smoke level was further
reduced with the increase in injection pressure from 250 to
350 bar. Raheman and Phadatare [41] observed an effective
reduction of smoke density when various blends of karanja oil
methyl ester and diesel were used instead of neat diesel. Buyukkaya [87] recorded the smoke opacity using rapeseed biodiesel/
diesel blends and diesel and reported a maximum of 60% reduction with neat biodiesel compared to that with neat diesel. Tsolakis et al. [111] observed that the use of rapeseed oil methyl ester
as fuel resulted in a reduction of smoke and the reason behind that
was explained to be the oxygenated nature of the biodiesel fuel. It
was also reported by them that the smoke was slightly (10%)
increased when injection timing was retarded. However, smoke
was found to be increased when EGR technique was employed.
In case of karanja biodiesel, exhaust smoke emission was signicantly lower (96.4%) for biodieselmethanol blend compared to
neat biodiesel for all the load condition, as reported by Anand et al.
[42]. Lin et al. [44] observed that when fueled with various
vegetable oil methyl esters; the smoke emission from the engine
was reduced compared to petroleum diesel, due to the uniform
airfuel mixing and the extra oxygen content in vegetable oil
Table 5
Emissions of different biodiesel fueled engine compared to diesel at normal operating condition.
Name of researchers
Biodiesel and its blends
CO
CO2
NOx
HC
Godiganur et al. [38]

Baiju et al. [39]
Sahoo et al. [40]
Mahua oil; B20, B40, B60, B100

Karanja oil; B20, B100
Jatopha, karanja and polanga oil; B20, B50
and B100
decrease
increase
decrease
increase
decrease 32%
increase 11.6%
decrease
increase
Raheman and Phadatare

[41]
Anand et al. [42]
Rakopoulos et al. [43]
Decrease 94% and 73% for

B20 and B100
decrease 46.5%
decrease 14%
decrease 26%
decrease
decrease 52%
decrease 20.64%, 20.73% and 6.75% decrease
with neat karanja, jatropha and
polanga biodiesels
decrease 80% and 20% for B20 and

B100
increase
decrease
decrease
decrease
increase 5.5825.97%
decrease 22.4733.15%
decrease 5072.73%
decrease 24% for B30

decrease 21% and 28%
increase

increase 21% and 20%
increase 9% and
14%
increase
decrease 23% for B50,

69% for B100
increase
increase
increase 5% for B15
decrease 4%
decrease
decrease 20%

decrease 122% for rapeseed
biodiesel
increase
increase 12% for B100,
9% for B70 and 6% for
B20
increase
decrease
decrease 10%
increase
Fontaras et al. [47]
Soybean oil; B50 and B100

Saleh [49]
Nabi et al. [50]
Puhan et al. [75]
Honge oil; B100

Jojoba oil; B100
Neem oil; B5, B10, B15
Mahua oil; B100
Honge, Jatropha and sesame oil; B100
increase
decrease
decrease 4% for B15
decrease 30%
increase
Behet [86]
Buyukkaya [87]
Waste anchovy sh oil; B25, B50, B75, B100 decrease 31.2% for B100
Rapeseed oil; B5, B20, B70 and B100
decrease 12%, 25%, 31% and
35% for B5, B20, B70 and
B100
Rapeseed oil; B100
decrease
decrease
Canola oil; B100
decrease 10%
Soybean oil; B3, B5, B10, B20
decrease
Waste cooking oil; B5, B10, B20, B30
decrease 6.75%, 7.33%, 8.32%,
and 13.1%
Soybean oil; B100
decrease
Mahua oil; B100
decrease 79% and 67% for
methyl and ethyl ester
decrease 4.57%
Puhan and Nagarajan [96]

Aydin and Bayindir [97]
Mahua oil; B100

Cotton seed oil; B5, B20, B50, B75, B100
decrease
decrease
increase
Gumus and Kasifoglu [98]
Apricot seed kernel oil; B5, B20, B50, B100
decrease
decrease
increase
decrease 9% and 27%
for methyl and ethyl
ester
decrease 12%
increase for B5,
decrease for B20, B50,
B75, B100
increase
decrease 44%
decrease 8%
decrease 66%,
Lin et al. [44]
Datta et al. [88]

Kegl [89]
Sureshkumara et al. [90]
Zou and Atkinson [91]
Randazzo and Sodr [92]
Lin et al. [93]
Yoon and Lee [94]
Puhan et al. [95]
increase
decrease 4% for B15

decrease 11%
increase 16.18%, 26.41% and 32.07%
for neat honge, jatropha and sesame
biodiesel
decrease 45% for B70 and 60% for
B100

decrease 25%
decrease
decrease
decrease 10.5%, 19.9%, 27.7%, and
36.0%
decrease
decrease 60% and 49% for methyl
and ethyl ester
decrease
decrease
decrease 63%
decrease 70%
increase for B75 and B100, decrease
for B5, B20, B50
decrease
decrease
decrease 18.66% for B100 and

2.66% for B5
decrease 38%
decrease 13%
increase
increase 47.2%
decrease 50%,
increase 33%
decrease 11.98% and 6.96%
Rice bran oil; B100
decrease 25.8%
increase 20%
decrease 20.5% and

20.1%
increase 4%
decrease 54%
increase 27.93%
Cotton seed oil; B5, B20 and B50
decrease
increase
Swaminathan and Sarangan Karanja oil; B20

[99]
Amarnath and Prabhakaran Karanja oil; B20, B40, B60, B80 and B100
[100]
Bayrakeken [101]
Crude and rened soybean oil; B100
Venkata Subbaiah and Raja
Gopal [102]
Aydin and Bayindir [103]
decrease
comparable
increase
increase
increase
decrease
decrease 53% and 37% for methyl
and ethyl ester
817
increase
increase
decrease 35%
increase 60.49%, 65.43% and
48.14% for neat honge, jatropha
and sesame biodiesel
decrease 33.42%
decrease
Nabi et al. [45]

elikten et al. [46]
Karanji oil; B100

Cottonseed oil, soybean oil, sunower oil,
rapeseed oil and palm oil; B10, B20
soybean oil, peanut oil, corn oil, sunower
oil, rapeseed oil, palm oil, palm kernel oil
and waste fried oil; B100
rapeseed and soybean oil; B100
Smoke
increase
increase
increase
increase
increase
increase
B50 and
decrease 16%
decrease
decrease
5% and 8% for
B100
decrease
decrease 44%
increase
Ranganathan and Sampath

[108]
Huzayyin et al. [109]
Pugazhvadivu and Jeyachandran [110]
Tsolakis et al. [111]
Aydin and lkili [112]
zcanli et al. [113]
Rao et al. [114]
Soltic et al. [115]
Devan and Mahalakshmi
[116]
Ulusoy et al. [104]

Sharma et al. [105]
lkili [106]
Shirneshan [107]
44.68%
10% for B100
decrease
decrease 29%
decrease
decrease 24%
decrease
Rapeseed oil; B20, B50, B100

Rapeseed oil; B20, B100
Castor Bean oil; B5, B10, B25, B50 and B100
Cotton seed oil; B25, B50, B75 and B100
Rapeseed oil; B100
Paradise oil; B20, B40, B50 and B100
decrease
decrease
decrease 36%
decrease
decrease 22% and 27% for B50 and decrease 33.5% and 39.4% for B50
B100
and B100
increase
increase signicantly
Jojoba oil; B20, B40 and B60
Waste frying oil; B100
increase signicantly
decrease 26%
increase 11%
decrease
decrease
decrease
decrease
decrease 30%
decrease
Sunower oil; B100

Neem oil; B20
Sunower oil; B100
Waste frying oil; B20, B40, B60, B80 and
B100
decrease 34.5%
decrease 11.1%
decrease 10.3%
decrease
increase for B5,
decrease for B20 and
B50
decrease
decrease 20%
increase
decrease 33%
HC
NOx
CO2
CO
Biodiesel and its blends
Name of researchers
Table 5 (continued )
decrease
decrease
Smoke
818
methyl ester which resulted in a superior combustion. Signicant

reductions of 72.73% and 59.09% were observed with palm kernel
oil methyl ester and palm oil methyl ester respectively. Nabi et al.
[50] observed that compared to conventional diesel fuel, the
smoke emission was reduced by 4% only using B15 blend of NOME.
With methyl ester of paradise oil it was observed by Devan and
Mahalakshmi [116] that the smoke emission was less with biodiesel. A 39.4% reduction in smoke emission for neat MEPS (B100)
and 33.5% reduction for MEPS 50 blend were recorded. The higher
combustion temperature and the longer combustion duration with
more diffusive combustion of biodiesel were attributed to this
kind of behavior. With the addition of diethylene glycol dimethyl
ether as an additive to pongamia methyl ester (karanja biodiesel),
smoke density reduced to 55% at part load and 13% at full load
condition, as observed by Swaminathan and Sarangan [99]. Ulusoy
et al. [104] reported that the smoke emission of sunower oil
methyl ester was lower than that with diesel fuel because of
complete combustion with biodiesel. Ranganathan and Sampath
[108] noted that cotton seed oil biodiesel produced less amount of
smoke emission (34.5% reduction) than diesel. According to them,
better combustion of biodiesel due to oxygen present in the fuel
itself promoted the oxidation process in the fuel rich zones and
thereby smoke was reduced.
On a contrary, Banapurmath et al. [76] observed more smoke
emission with honge, jatropha and sesame oil methyl esters in
comparison to that with neat petro-diesel. The values of percentage increase in smoke compared to neat mineral diesel were
reported to be 16.18%, 26.41% and 32.07% respectively. According
to them, the heavier molecular structure and higher viscosity of
biodiesel caused poor atomization and that led to higher smoke
formation for biodiesel compared to diesel. Amarnath and Prabhakaran [100] observed an increase in smoke opacity with the use
of karanja biodiesel. The increase was noted to be 33% when biodiesel share in the blended fuel was increased from 20 to 100%.
The reason as described by them was the higher viscosity and
lower volatility of karanja biodiesel which led to a difculty while
atomizing the fuel in the combustion chamber and resulted in an
incomplete combustion. However, at higher compression ratio the
combustion process was complete enough in reducing the smoke
by 45%. Higher injection pressure also improved atomization
which led to a better combustion and resulted in less amount of
smoke. The reductions in smoke at the exhaust were found to be
by 57.9% and 53.8% for diesel and karanja biodiesel respectively for
increase of injection pressure from 150 to 250 bar. Pugazhvadivu
and Jeyachandran [110] observed higher smoke emission with the
waste frying oil (both non-preheated and pre-heated) compared to
diesel due to poor volatility and higher viscosity of WFOs constituents. However, the emission was found to be slightly lower in
case of preheated oil. Aydin and Bayindir [103] observed that the
smoke opacity was higher at higher loads and it was not much
affected with the use of biodiesel.
Smoke emission is generally expressed in terms of Bosch smoke
number (BSN) and Hartrige smoke unit (HSU). The review of the
experimental reports of several researchers presented in this
section clearly shows that the smoke emission is reduced with the
use of biodiesel/diesel blends and neat biodiesel. However, a few
studies are also there which show a reverse trend, i.e., the increase
of smoke with the use of biodiesel. Some results of the experimental works from the literature related to smoke emission from
diesel engines have been shown in Fig. 11(a)(c).
The rst two gures are based on the works of Puhan et al. [75]
and Sharon et al. [27] and these show reduction in smoke. The
maximum reduction is observed to be 11% and 19% with mahua
and used palm biodiesel respectively. The possible reason as
explained by many researchers is the better combustion due to the
presence of oxygen in the biodiesel or biodiesel blended diesel
fuels. Fig. 11(c) is prepared on the basis of the experimental work

of Banapurmath et al. [76] and it shows an increase in smoke
emission with jatropha biodiesel. The maximum increase is noted
to be at medium load range and it is nearly 26%. It is due to the
higher viscosity and heavier molecular structure of biodiesel,
which results a poorer combustion and leads to an excess smoke
as explained by them.
4.6. Summary of emission analysis
At the end of this section, it can be said that the inherent
oxygen in biodiesel molecules plays a key role in the formation of
different pollutants. The availability of extra oxygen enhanced the
combustion when biodiesel or its blends with mineral diesel are
used as fuels. As a result, the emissions of CO, HC and smoke
formation are reduced signicantly, but the maximum temperature during combustion increases. The enhanced combustion with
biodiesel and its blends with diesel increases the amount of CO2
and the increased combustion temperature increases the amount
of NOx in the exhaust compared to that with neat diesel.
The emission parameters investigated by several researchers
with various types of biodiesel and dieselbiodiesel blends have
been summarized and listed in Table 5. The increase and decrease
of different pollutants in percentages have been shown with
respect to mineral diesel under normal operating conditions only.
The table shows that the maximum reductions in CO, HC and
smoke emissions are by 73%, 63% and 72.73% with neat karanja
biodiesel, neat mahua biodiesel and waste fried biodiesel respectively. However, few studies show reverse trends. An increase of
HC emission by even 65.43% with neat jatropha biodiesel and
increase of smoke emission by 33% with neat karanja biodiesel are
also reported. The maximum increments in NOx and CO2 emission
are 44.68% and 20% with castor bean biodiesel and rice bran biodiesel respectively. In some cases, opposite trends such as 27%
reduction in NOx emission with neat mahua oil ethyl ester and 16%
reduction in CO2 emission with rapeseed biodiesel have also been
observed.
The authors feel that the condition of the engine, purity of the
fuel, proper method of biodiesel production and the experimental
uncertainties should be ensured to obtain the maximum advantage of biodiesel fuel. The negative effects of biodiesel as CI engine
fuel can be nullied to some extent using different pre-treatments
of the fuel such as preheating and addition of ethanol and
methanol as supplementary fuels. Exhaust gas recirculation technique may also be employed to reduce the amount of NOx in the
exhaust.
5. Conclusion
On going through the different studies minutely, conducted by
different researchers on the various aspects of biodiesel as CI engine
fuel, the following conclusions have been drawn. Biodiesel offers wide
range of benets such as renewability, biodegradability, nontoxic
nature, reduction in import oil bills and less pollutant emissions in
general. The properties of biodiesel are dependent upon the fatty acid
structure of the raw feedstocks and to some extent on the production
process. Biodiesel is mainly produced by a chemical reaction called
transesterication using various renewable feedstocks such as vegetable oils (both edible and non-edible), algal oils and animal fats.
Brake thermal efciency with biodiesel is found to be less than
that with diesel by around 2% on an average in most of the
investigations reported in the literature. The brake specic fuel
consumption rate on the other hand increases with biodiesel
approximately by 13%. It has been noted that the exhaust gas
temperature with biodiesel is 10% higher than that with diesel. The
819
opposite trend is also observed and reported by a few researchers

under certain engine operating conditions. The higher cetane
number and the intrinsic oxygen of biodiesel enhance the combustion process which leads to reductions in HC, CO and smoke
formation by 20%, 30% and 50% respectively on an average. The
oxygen content of biodiesel is responsible for the higher NOx
emission and CO2 emission. General trends observed with biodiesel fuel are the increase in emissions of NOx and CO2 approximately by 12% and 14% respectively.
The blended fuels reduce the harmful pollutant emissions
except NOx and CO2 signicantly at the cost of a bit sacrice in the
energetic performances of the engine. However, the use of post
treatment technique of exhaust gas can be employed to reduce
NOx emission. Also, the life cycle CO2 emission from biodiesel fuel
is less than that of diesel as the basic feedstocks consume CO2
during its cultivation. So, in the decade of growing energy crisis
and environmental degradation, a certain percentage of biodiesel
should be blended with mineral diesel in all sectors those are
using diesel engine as their primary energy producing device.
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Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 57 (2016) 799821

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews

A comprehensive review of biodiesel as an alternative fuel

of cheap petroleum and appropriate methods for the renement of

2. Production of biodiesel and its properties

Fig. 1. Transesterication reaction [14].

reactants and products in the transesterication reaction are:

values were studied by Mendow et al. [22]. Due to low acidity of

Alcohol type Molar ratio of

Catalyst amount Reaction condition

Biodiesel yield (%)

Saka and Kusdiana

Ilkl et al. [16]

Eruca sativa gars oil

Oner and Altun [20]

Crude soybean oil

Srivastava and Verma Karanja oil

Ghadge and Raheman [29]

Euphorbia lathyris, Sapium

Charpe and Rathod

followed by the researchers have been summarized and presented in

engine. The higher viscosity affects the uidity as well as the

Dilute acid esterification

3. Engine performance with biodiesel

Alternative fuels or supplementary fuels used in engines are

3.1. Effect on brake thermal efciency

Fig. 3. Flow chart of biodiesel production from microalgae [37].

Cetane no. Heating value

Gumus [56] observed a reduction in brake thermal efciency of

efciency with load is lower with biodiesel than with diesel.

Brake Thermal Efficiency (%)

Brake Thermal Efficiency (%)

Brake Thermal Efficiency (%)

observed slight improvement in brake thermal efciency using

Brake Power (kW)

Brake Power (kW)

Brake Power (kW)

timing caused a poorer combustion of biodiesel and it led to an

Brake Power (kW)

Brake Power (kW)

Fig. 5. Effect of different biodiesels on brake specic fuel consumption.

compared to that of diesel. Oxygenated nature of the biodiesel which

experimental studies suggests that it will be benecial and wise if

4. Effect of biodiesel on engine emissions

3.4. Summary of performance analysis

4.1. Effect on CO emission

Exhaust Gas Temperature ( C)

Exhasut Gas Temperature ( C)

Brake Power (kW)

Brake Power (kW)

Fig. 6. Effect of different biodiesels on exhaust gas temperature.

Biodiesel and it blends

Godiganur et al. [38]

Mahua oil; B20, B40, B60, B100

Raheman and Phadatare

Karanja oil; B20, B40, B60, B80, B100

Lin et al. [44]

Soybean oil, peanut oil, corn oil, sunower oil,

increase for B20 and B40,

increase 12% for

Jatropha and karanja oil; B100

increase 9.29% for jatropha