Abstract
The combustion characteristics of Fatty Acid Methyl Ester (FAME) fuels, major components of biodiesel, were examined using a suspended droplet combustion technique. To fully elucidate the ignition, combustion, and soot formation characteristics visualization with a shadowgraph method was conducted with a high speed video camera. A quantification of the soot formation area during the droplet combustion was attempted by applying an image processing method with a personal computer. The results showed that as the mixing ratios of FAME to gas oil increase the number of pixels which represent the soot formation area increases. A good correlation in soot formation characteristics was obtained between the present study and another study where the determination was mass measurements of soot trapped on glass fiber filters.
