Energy & Fuels, Vol.31, No.6, 6173-6181, 2017
Surrogate Generation and Evaluation for Biodiesel and Its Mixtures with Fossil Diesel
In this paper a precedently developed surrogate optimization algorithm for fossil fuels, which originally allowed simultaneous fitting of the true boiling point (TBP) curve, the liquid density at 15 degrees C, and the cetane number, is refined toward its application to biodiesel and its mixtures with fossil diesel. For this purpose, the algorithm is extended (1) to also include fitting of the kinematic viscosity at 40 degrees C and (2) to account for peculiarities of biodiesel concerning its narrow boiling range and compensation of systematic errors of measured boiling curves. To illustrate these improvements, first, the algorithm is applied to property estimation and surrogate optimization of three different biodiesel fuels, for which surrogates consisting of one to three components are proposed. Second, a surrogate for a commercial European fossil diesel is calculated and produced in lab-scale. Finally, the algorithm is used for surrogate optimization and property estimation of mixtures of biodiesel and fossil diesel, considering fractions of biodiesel of 7% and 20% per volume. It is shown that the improved algorithm is capable of reliably optimizing surrogates for fuels containing both biogenic and fossil components.