A comparative study of combustion between biofuels and fossil fuels

Current global energy supplies are dominated by fossil fuels, with much smaller contributions from nuclear power and hydropower. Bioenergy provides about 10% of the total energy supplies, making it by far the most important renewable energy source used; solar, wind and other renewable energy sources have nowadays a very small contribution. On average, in the industrialized countries biomass contributes less than 10% to the total energy supplies, but in developing countries the proportion is as high as 20-30%. Bioenergy could play a bigger role, especially in the industrial countries that consume a lot of fossil energy and are therefore the main contributors to atmospheric pollution and global warming. Therefore, biofuels can contribute to reducing the dependency on fossil fuels and to lowering greenhouse gas emissions due to transport and other activities and can be considered as both renewable and sustainable energy sources. Indeed, these are recognized as'net zero CO emission' fuels due to the very short-term carbon cycle. Thus the goal of this paper is to investigate the possibility to reduce NOx and CO emissions still maintaining the same conventional fuel performance. In particular, in the following, a comparative study of the bio-fuels ignition delay time, flame temperature ad emissions at different operative conditions with those of conventional fuels, has been performed. Results have actually shown that renewable fuels could play a critical role in pollutants abatement and for the next generation energy sources. © 2012 by Antonella Ingenito.