Biodiesel fuel in diesel micro turbine engine:: Modeling and experimental evaluation

Biodiesel is an alternative fuel for energy conversion. Many performance and emission tests have been carried out in reciprocate diesel engines that use this fuel over the past years and very few in gas turbine engines. This work aims at assessing the thermal performance for full and partial loads of a 30k W diesel micro turbine engine fed with diesel, biodiesel and their mixture as fuel. A simulation was performed using the GE Enter Software GATE CYCLE to evaluate the thermal performance of the 30 kW micro turbine engine. Experimental performance tests were carried out on a 30 kW diesel micro turbine engine installed in the laboratories of the Federal University of Itajuba - Unifei, Brazil, and the results are compared with those of the simulation. No changes were necessary in the fuel control system and in the fuel atomisation process. There is a good agreement between the simulations and the experimental results from the full load down to about 50% of the load for diesel, biodiesel and mixtures. The biodiesel and its mixtures used as fuel in micro turbines have shown no significant changes in performance and behavior compared to diesel fuel.