A review of the use of Biodiesel as a green fuel for diesel engines

Stringent regulations are applied by the international regulators to significantly reduce the exhaust emissions from internal combustion engines. Several solutions are proposed, while the use of biofuels in diesel engines attracts the attention of researchers and automotive companies as an alternative source of energy to cut the amount of exhaust emissions produced. In this review paper, an overview is presented on the use of biofuels in diesel engine applications. This review covers the history and the methods of biofuel production, the performance and the exhaust emissions of diesel engines fueled with biofuels and the main parameters that affect the behavior of the combustion process using biofuels. This paper also describes the numerical models and software developed to easily compute the engine performance for different types of biofuels. Finally, some issues and challenges are presented to improve the biofuel system performance and the required safety aspects.