Preparation and performance improvement of methanol and palm oil/palm kernel oil blended fuel

Abstract Using fossil fuels in engines has caused energy shortages, carbon emissions and environmental pollution. Methanol is considered as an alternative carbon-neutral fuel and energy carrier in the future, but it is hard to be used in diesel engines due to its awful auto-ignition property and low heating value. Blending methanol with vegetable oil can solve the above challenges. Palm oil (PO) ranks first in the total global vegetable oil production. Therefore, in the current study, a new method of preparing PO or palm kernel oil (PKO) with methanol was first proposed. Meantime, the microscope observation, conductivity measurement and other analysis on physico-chemical properties have been conducted. Results show that both methanol and PO/PKO can form stable microemulsion as tetrahydrofuran (THF), polyoxymethylene dimethyl ether (PODE) and butanol were selected as co-solvents, furthermore THF has the strongest solubilizing ability among the three co-solvents. PKO has a stronger affinity for methanol than PO. The electrical conductivity verified the structure and stability of the microemulsion. Copper, polypropylene, polyethylene and fluororubber are resistant to corrosion and swelling of blended fuels. This work provides valuable methods on preparing carbon-neutral fuel in diesel engines.