Laminar flame speed of fossil/air and biofuels/air combustion

Traditional fossil fuels are considered to be largely responsible for the atmospheric environmental degradation. Biofuels can contribute to reducing the dependency on fossil fuels and to lowering greenhouse gas emissions due to aviation transport and can be considered as both renewable and sustainable energy sources. Indeed, biofuels are recognized as “net zero CO2 emission”. In fact, carbon dioxide absorbed by plants during the growth of the biomass is roughly equivalent to the amount of carbon produced when the fuel is burned in a combustion engine – which is simply returning the CO2 to the atmosphere. This would allow the biofuel to be approximately carbon neutral over its life cycle. Thus the goal of this paper is to investigate the possibility to replace current aviation fuels with next generation biofuels. In particular, in the following, a comparative study of the bio-fuels flame speed, flame temperature ad emissions at different operative conditions with those of conventional fuels, has been performed. Results have actually shown that renewable fuels could play a critical role in pollutants abatement and for the next generation energy sources.