Home // International Journal On Advances in Systems and Measurements, volume 7, numbers 1 and 2, 2014 // View article
Authors:
Michal Borecki
Piotr Doroz
Przemyslaw Prus
Pawel Pszczolkowski
Jan Szmidt
Michael L. Korwin-Pawlowski
Jaroslaw Frydrych
Andrzej Kociubinski
Mariusz Duk
Keywords: biodiesel fuel; fuel quality; useful state of fuel; fiber optic capillaries; fiber optic sensors; capillary sensor; smart capillary optrode
Abstract:
There are many fuel quality standards introduced by national organizations and fuel producers. Usual techniques for measuring the quality of fuel, as for example cetane index, fraction composition and flash point, require relatively complex and expensive laboratory equipment. Therefore, testing of fuel is not rapid and can be costly. On the fuel user side, fast and low cost sensing of useful state of biodiesel fuel is important. One of the devices that address this task is the fiber optic capillary sensor in which forced local conversion of diesel fuel into vapor is implemented. The present paper concentrates on the critical elements the construction of the sensor as well as on the interpretation of experimental results. We have investigated the construction of the micro heater and the technology of smart capillary optrode preparation. We propose a capillary optrode construction and technology that reduces unwanted light coupling, as well as a new micro heater construction that uses a silicon carbide heating element. Our experimental assumption is that diesel fuel quality can be correlated with the type and concentration of its bio-components. We examined fuels that are mixtures prepared from components that are in line with European Union standards. The components used are petrodiesel fuel and bio-esters as well as edible rapeseed oil. For the mentioned fuels, we showed that the results of experiments are easy to interpret and that the useful state of diesel and biodiesel fuels can be determined from the time of local heating that is required for vapor phase creation and the local time of vapor bubble formation.
Pages: 57 to 67
Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2014. Used with permission.
Publication date: June 30, 2014
Published in: journal
ISSN: 1942-261x