Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Fuel journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/fuel Full Length Article Reducing volatile organic compound emissions from diesel engines using canola oil biodiesel fuel and blends Jun Cong Ge a , Ho Young Kim a , Sam Ki Yoon b , Nag Jung Choi a, ⁎ a Division of Mechanical Design Engineering, Chonbuk National University, 567 Baekje-daero, Jeonjusi 561-756, Jeollabuk-do, South Korea b Technical Education Center, GM Korea Company, 72 Saengmuol-ro, Gunsansi 573-882, Jeollabuk-do, South Korea ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Canola oil biodiesel fuel Alternative fuel Volatile organic compounds Diesel engines Gas chromatography/mass spectrometry ABSTRACT Volatile organic compounds (VOCs), a group of environmental pollutants, are emitted in large quantities when fossil fuel is burned in automobiles. This research investigates the VOCs in the exhaust emissions from a common rail diesel engine fueled with canola oil biodiesel fuel (COBF), conventional diesel fuel (CDF), and B20 (20% COBF blended with 80% CDF by volume) at various engine loads (30 Nm, 80 Nm, 130 Nm) and a constant engine speed of 1500 rpm. The results indicate that the regulated emissions (CO, HC, PM) were reduced obviously when COBF and B20 were used in a CRDI diesel engine, and a larger number of VOCs (about 30 types) are emitted with CDF and the quantity emitted is greater than with B20 and COBF. The total VOC emissions (TVOC) of B20 were lower than those with the other test fuels at all experimental conditions. In addition, this paper presents a simple approach for sampling VOC emissions from diesel engines, uses a gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/ MS) analysis, and also confirms that COBF blended with CDF in a volume fraction of 20–80 is an excellent alternative fuel based on VOC emissions. 1. Introduction Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are harmful air pollutants that pose a serious threat to human health and negatively impact the en- vironment. VOC sources are divided into indoor and outdoor [1,2]. Indoor sources include building materials [3], painting materials [4], packaging materials [5], and furniture items [6]. Outdoor sources in- clude combustion of fossil fuels [7], vehicle exhaust [8–11], and in- dustrial exhaust [12,13]. Overexposure to VOC in humans can produce dizziness, nausea, vomiting, weakness of limbs, and other symptoms of discomfort. Prolonged exposure to VOCs can lead to kidney failure, cancer, and death [14–16]. In addition, with sufficient illumination, a photochemical reaction between VOCs and NOx produces ozone, which also threatens human health as well as that of animals and plants [17]. Therefore, reducing the VOC content in the air is a particularly im- portant topic in the field of environmental protection research. Currently, there are two main ways to reduce VOCs in the air, and these, like diesel engine exhaust emissions, can be divided into “post- treatments” and “pre-treatments.” The “post-treatment” technique in- volves adsorbing or decomposing VOCs using some sort of adsorbent material [18–20]. As nanocomposite technology has developed, a variety of nanocomposite adsorption materials for air purification [21–23] have been developed. Some researchers have used electrospinning technology to synthesize nanocomposite films [24–26] that offer good VOC adsorption from air. For example, Kim et al. [25] succeeded in combining fly ash (FA) powder with polyurethane (PU) using electrospinning technology. They reported that PU with 30 wt% FA can adsorb about 35 μg of benzene and 40 μg of toluene per gram of fiber. Celebioglu et al. [27] reported that hydroxypropyl-beta-cyclo- dextrin and hydroxypropyl-gamma-cyclodextrin electrospun nanofibers have high adsorption capability for the VOCs aniline and benzene. Nanofibers produced by electrospinning technology have higher surface area than the same materials in powder form. Many materials can ad- sorb VOCs, such as activated carbon [28], activated carbon nanofiber material [29], cyclodextrin polymers [30], and titanium dioxide [31]. However, despite the many modern materials [32,33] that can adsorb VOCs, associated treatments merely reduce VOCs after they have been emitted; they cannot solve the problem at the source. Pre-treatment techniques, such as biodiesel fuels, can reduce the amount of VOCs emitted into the air by fossil-fuel combustion applications [34,35]. Biodiesel fuels, an alternative to fossil fuels, can be produced from vegetable oils or animal fats and have the unique advantages of being non-toxic, harmless, recyclable, environmentally friendly, and biode- gradable [36,37]. Fig. 1 compares the exhaust emissions of fossil fuels and biodiesel fuels. Since the 1890s, when Rudolph Diesel first dis- covered that vegetable oil could be used in diesel engines, the study of https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fuel.2018.01.045 Received 11 October 2017; Received in revised form 9 January 2018; Accepted 12 January 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: freedefeng@naver.com (J.C. Ge), jerryme@naver.com (H.Y. Kim), sky596072@hanmail.net (S.K. Yoon), njchoi@jbnu.ac.kr (N.J. Choi). Fuel 218 (2018) 266–274 0016-2361/ © 2018 Published by Elsevier Ltd. T