A study of lubricant oil degradation in diesel engines by computational simulation

Biodiesel as fuel in internal combustion has been increasingly used by transport or stationary engines. Currently, the impact of the use of B100 biodiesel on engine lubrication system is not widely studied. Commercial vehicles fleets using biodiesel preventively perform the exchange of lubricating oil in the mileage half recommended by manufacturer. For this reason, this work aims to study the effect of lubricating oil degradation by physical and chemical characteristics on diesel engines using diesel (BS10) and biodiesel (B100). Simulations were conducted on the Japanese MZR-CD 2.0 RF diesel engine model by Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) using ANSYS software. Thermal behavior of the combustion of diesel (BS10) and (B100) was obtained and their peak temperatures were applied in a mathematical model to find kinetic viscosity. B100 biodiesel burning temperature is slightly higher than BS10 diesel resulting in a similar kinetic viscosity on the lubricating oil of 0,37015 cSt. The results also show that biodiesel degrades easily in comparison BS10 diesel at the same engine operational condition.