Abstract
The spray combustion characteristics of fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) mixed diesel oil were examined experimentally in this study. The FAMEs examined in this study are Methyl Laurate (ML), Methyl Oleate (MO), Methyl Linoleate (MLi) and Methyl Linolenate (MLn), the major components of coconut methyl ester, palm oil methyl ester and rapeseed methyl ester. FAMEs were mixed with diesel oil and injected into a high temperature and high pressure constant volume chamber with two observation windows. The luminous flame formed inside the chamber was photographed by a high speed color video camera and analyzed by a two color pylometry method of luminous flame. From the experiments, it is explored that the ignition delay and the combustion period of FAMEs are almost equivalent with those of diesel oil under the ambient condition of 3 MPa and 985 K. The flame temperature of each FAMEs mixed with diesel oil has only a slight difference. The amount of soot produced decreases with the increase of the mixing rate of FAMEs, which corresponds well with the mass fraction of oxygen content in each fuel.
