Abstract
Increased environmental awareness and depletion of fossil petroleum resources are driving automotive industry to seek out and use alternative fuels. Transesterified vegetable oil derivatives called “biodiesel” appear to be one of the most convenient ways of using bio-origin vegetable oils as substitute fuels in compression ignition engines.
Due to its physical and chemical properties, the biodiesel engine cold starting is more difficult than in the case of ordinary diesel engine.
In order to sustain this remark, the paper presents an experimental investigation regarding cold starting characteristics at -200C of a common automotive compression ignition engine using commercial diesel fuel and different blends of diesel oil with biofuel, such as B30, B40 and B50.
This study was performed within the frame of a research project granted by the Romanian Council for Scientific Research in the Higher Education (CNCSIS), aiming to improve the biodiesel fuelled engine cold start characteristics by using a technique consisting in injecting some volatile substances of ether nature in the intake manifold.
Keywords: biodiesel, cold start