**Advanced Fuel Solutions for Combustion Systems**

[22] Boretti, A.A., Cantore, G., Borghi, M. and Mattarelli, E., "Experimental and Computa‐ tional Methods for Swirl Port Design in Internal Combustion Engines". Proceedings of "17th Annual Fall Technical Conference of the ASME Internal Combustion Engine

[23] Mattarelli, E., Montorsi, L. and Fontanesi, S. "Numerical Analysis of Swirl Control Strategies in a Four Valve HSDI Diesel engines". ICEF2004-909. Proceedings of the

[24] Mattarelli, E., Fontanesi, S., Gagliardi, V. and Malaguti, S., "Multidimensional Cycle Analysis on a Novel 2-Stroke HSDI Diesel Engine". SAE Paper 2007-01-0161. 2007

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Division", Milwaukee (USA), September 24-27, 1995.

182 Advances in Internal Combustion Engines and Fuel Technologies

ASME 2004 Fall Technical Conference. October 24-27, 2004.

**Chapter 6**

**Sclerocarya Birrea Biodiesel as an**

Jerekias Gandure and Clever Ketlogetswe

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/54215

**1. Introduction**

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

provide baseline information for further exploration.

**Alternative Fuel for Compression Ignition Engines**

The continued escalation of fuel prices and environmental concerns among other factors has stimulated active research interest in non petroleum, renewable, and less polluting fuels. Biodiesel (Fatty acid methyl ester) has been identified as a suitable replacement for petroleum diesel in diesel engines [1]. Many feedstocks for biodiesel production have been proposed, with most vegetable oils being suitable substrates. As such, availability of property data is necessary for as many biodiesel fuels as possible, based on different plant oils, to evaluate suitability for use in diesel engines. With birrea plant's huge abundance in Southern Africa and its high kernel oil content [2, 3], property data of its derived bio‐ diesel is deemed necessary. Moreover, one way of reducing the biodiesel production costs is to use the less expensive feedstock containing fatty acids such as inedible oils and by products of refinery processes [4]. This study investigated selected properties of birrea bi‐ odiesel including chemical composition, viscosity, acidity and calorific value. Engine per‐ formance in terms of fuel consumption, brake power and torque at a compression ratio of 16:1, and emission levels of hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, oxides of ni‐ trogen and oxygen were also studied. Petroleum diesel is used to generate similar sets of data in order to compare the performance of the diesel engine using the two diesel fuels. This study is deemed significant as authors are not aware of any study that attempts to investigate sclerocarya birrea plant oil as a potential substrate for biodiesel production. As such, results from this work, including chemical composition, thermo-physical properties and performance of birrea biodiesel, provide new knowledge of a novel fuel source, and

The suitability of biodiesel as a fuel depends on its chemical composition, particularly the length of carbon chain and the degree of saturation of fatty acid molecules. Saturated fat‐

> © 2013 Gandure and Ketlogetswe; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2013 Gandure and Ketlogetswe; licensee InTech. This is a paper distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,

distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
