Effect of hydrogen on compression-ignition (CI) engine fueled with vegetable oil/biodiesel from various feedstocks: A review

Compression ignition (CI) engines used in the transportation sector operates on fossil diesel and is one of the biggest causes of air pollution. Numerous studies were carried out over last two decades to substitute the fossil diesel with biofuels so that the net carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission can be minimized. However, the engine performance with these fuel was sub-standard and there were many long-term issues. Therefore, many researchers inducted hydrogen along with the biofuels. The present study gives an outlook on the effect of hydrogen addition with biodiesel/vegetable oil from various sources in CI engine. Engine parameters (brake thermal efficiency, brake specific fuel consumption), combustion parameters (in-cylinder pressure and heat release rate) and emission parameters (unburned hydrocarbon (HC), carbon monoxide (CO), oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and smoke emissions) were evaluated in detail. The results show that hydrogen induction in general improves the engine performance as compared to biodiesel/vegetable oil but it is similar/lower than diesel. Except NOx emissions all other emissions showed a decreasing trend with hydrogen addition. To counter this effect numerous after-treatment systems like selective catalytic reduction (SCR), exhaust gas recirculation (EGR), selective non-catalytic reduction system (SNCR) and non-selective catalytic reduction system (NSCR) were proposed by researchers which were also studied in this review.