Computational and experimental investigations on tailor-made biofuel blend properties

In regards to sustainability and environmental reasons, biomass based biofuel has emerged as promising candidates amongst other alternative vehicular fuel options. Feedstock selection contributes to diverse biofuel blend components. Through computational product design, potential candidates can be generated and screened from a large pool of fuel blends. Computational approaches minimize the search region and assist focused experimental work as conventional experimental methods are exhaustive and time consuming. Fuel blend properties need to conform with fuel regulation standards in order to be accepted as a vehicular fuel option. This paper compares computationally generated tailor-made biofuel blend properties with experimental methods. Results show notable errors for prediction of kinematic viscosity and distillation temperature of tailor-made biofuel blends associated with property models implemented in model formulation. Nonetheless, predicted and experimentally tested tailor-made biofuel blend properties complied with EN590 fuel regulation standard

Potential of energy recovery from an integrated palm oil mill with biogas power plant

The Malaysian palm oil industry has made significant contribution to the country's gross domestic product (GDP) due to the increasing global demand of palm oil over the past decades. However, it is undoubtedly a sector that consumes enormous energy and water. With the uprising concerns of the energy resource shortage and global warming, several green technology policies such as the feed-in-tariff policy have been implemented by government to accelerate the sustainable development of palm oil industry in Malaysia. The establishment of feed-in-tariff has successfully increased the number of palm oil mills that are completed with biogas facilities. Recent studies indicate that there are significant amounts of waste heat released from biogas power plant are utilisable as heat source for palm oil mill processes. As an initiative to develop the research of optimizing the energy efficiency of integrated palm oil mill with the biogas power plant, this study is directed toward the analysis of energy balance and material balance of an integrated palm oil mill with biogas power plant which covered both the palm oil milling process energy demand and the biogas power plant waste heat potential analysis. An integrated palm oil mill with biogas power plant running with 120 t/h fresh fruit bunches input was evaluated. The result indicates that there were a total of 3491.66 kW waste heat which corresponded to 46.82 % of the total biogas engine energy input could be recovered for process heating. By fully utilising the biogas plant waste heat as process heating for palm oil mill processes, it is estimated that up to 9.46 % of the total energy supplied could be saved

Prospect of solar thermal integration for multiple processes in oleochemical and poultry industries

The implementation of solar thermal technology in the industries has huge potential in a tropical region due to abundant solar radiation. Getting limitless source of sunlight throughout the year is not a guarantee for solar thermal to be implemented in industries as many factors from the demand and supply sides need to be considered. These include process heat demand profiles, solar intensity, weather patterns, types and capacity of the solar thermal system, site suitability, and availability. This paper presents the establishment of a process heat demand profile to examine the potential of solar thermal integration in oleochemical and poultry industries in Malaysia. A systematic method for matching the solar energy supply under variable climatic conditions with an appropriate heat demand profile leads to improved design and created an optimal operating strategy. Two illustrative case studies are demonstrated to highlight the potential of solar thermal integration at the process and product sides in oleochemical and poultry industries, which provide significant progress towards fossil fuel and emissions reduction. The results revealed that the increase of process demand needs to be accommodated with bigger thermal storage tanks and larger solar collector area to achieve and maintain high solar fraction. The increase of investment cost was offset by larger energy savings and concluding all the simulated scenarios had their payback period within 13 to 18 y

Cetane number estimation of pure compound using group contribution method

Water-in-diesel emulsion, also known as WIDE fuel, is one of the promising alternative fuels for diesel engines due to its positive impact on the performance and combustion characteristics of the engine, while at the same time reducing the emissions of NOx and particulate matter, without the need to modify the diesel engine. Cetane number is a key property that is considered in the formulation of diesel fuel. Cetane number is used to determine the ignition quality of fuel. One of the limitations in designing the diesel fuel formulation is the limited experimental data. The objective of this paper is to develop the cetane number property estimations for a pure compound. A property model was developed using the group contribution approach. In this approach, the molecular structure of the chemical was represented and divided into three levels, namely first-order (220 groups), second-order (130 groups), and third-order (74 groups). The cetane number with the group contribution occurrences of 271 chemicals were regressed using linear regression in MATLAB software to generate the contribution values of the three group levels. The regression step yielded contribution values of 43 groups for the first-order, 35 groups for the second-order, and 7 for the third-order. The coefficient of determination, R2, for the cetane number property models was 0.9447, indicating that the proposed model had a good correlation and is reliable to use

Characterisation of andrographolide in andrographis paniculata under different cultivation conditions

The trend in the practical uses of herbal medicine has gained increasing momentum in recent years. One of the trends includes the use of the andrographolide-containing Andrographis paniculata, which is a herb that is traditionally used as medicine. There are not many studies have investigated the cultivation of this plant. The aim of this study is to develop a standard of procedure for cultivating Andrographis paniculata using the fertigation technique. A total of 6 treatments in 2 growth medium compositions were studied; treatments T1, T3, and T5 in Cocopeat-RHA (70:30) and treatments T2, T4, and T6 in 100 % cocopeat. 3 magnesium compositions of 10 ppm (T1 and T2), 50 ppm (T3 and T4), and 70 ppm (T5 and T6) in nutrient solution were also studied. Treatments T1, T3, and T5 showed the potential for better growth quality with a maximum plant height of 32.51 cm, 32.51 cm, and 31.75 cm. The andrographolide content was comparable with controls 1 and 2 (0.67-0.70 µg/mL). In higher magnesium compositions of the nutrient solution, the dry herb yield of T5 and T6 decreased from 2.4 g to 1.6 g and 2.4 g to 1.2 g. The T3 and T5 treatments exhibited a higher yield than T4 and T6 based on a comparison of dry herb yield. The incorporated fertigation technique showed an on-par quantity of andrographolide yield to that of conventional techniques (0.67-0.70 µg/mL) although it showed an advantage of overcoming the cleanliness problem faced in this study. Hence, the T3 standard of procedure was deemed the best, as it gave better plant growth quality with a maximum plant height of 31.75 cm, a maximum number of leaves (141 total count), a good dry herb yield of 2.2 g, and better andrographolide content 0.7 µg/mL. The fertigation technique incorporated with the combined Cocopeat-RHA medium and 50 ppm magnesium composition in the nutrient solution is suggested for the cultivation of Andrographis paniculata