title: Croton megalocarpus oil-fired micro-trigeneration prototype for remote and self-contained applications: experimental assessment of its performance and gaseous and particulate emissions.
abstract: According to the International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook 2011, 60 per cent of the population in Africa, some 587 million people, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, lacked access to electricity in 2009. We developed a 6.5 kWe micro-trigeneration prototype, on the basis of internal combustion engine with pure Croton megalocarpus oil (CMO) fuelling, which configures a distributed energy system to generate power, heating and cooling from a single sustainable fuel source for remote users. Croton megalocarpus is an indigenous tree in East and South Africa which has recently attracted lots of interests as a biofuel source because of its high oil-yield rate. The direct and local use of CMO, instead of CMO biodiesel converted by the transesterification process, minimizes the carbon footprints left behind because of the simple fuel production of CMO. The experimental assessment proves that the prototype fuelled with CMO achieves similar efficiency as with diesel. Also, with the elevation of the oil injection temperature, the gaseous and particulate emissions of CMO could be ameliorated to some extent as improvement of the atomization in the spray and the combustion in the engine cylinder.
authors.affiliation: Sir Joseph Swan Centre for Energy Research, Newcastle Institute for Research on Sustainability , Newcastle University , Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU , UK.
authors.forename: Dawei
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Sir Joseph Swan Centre for Energy Research, Newcastle Institute for Research on Sustainability , Newcastle University , Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU , UK.
authors.forename: Anthony P
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Roskilly
authors.affiliation: Sir Joseph Swan Centre for Energy Research, Newcastle Institute for Research on Sustainability , Newcastle University , Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU , UK.
authors.forename: Hongdong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yu
keywords: Croton megalocarpus; gaseous and particulate emissions; micro trigeneration; pure plant oil fuelling