Identification of Citronella Oil Fractions as Efficient Bio-Additive for Diesel Engine Fuel

Abstract

Escalation fuel consumption occurs in various regions of the world. However, world oil reserves decline from year to year so that it becomes scarce and causes oil prices to surge up. This problem can be solved by saving fuel consumption. One method of saving fuel is adding bio-additives from citronella oil as a sustainable resource to diesel fuels. Citronellal, citronellol and geraniol are the main components of citronella oil which can be used as fuel additives. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of citronella oil fractions as bio-additives to the performance of diesel engine. The research stages include: extraction of citronella oil, vacuum fractionation of citronella oil, physical chemical characterization of citronella oil and its fractions, formulation of bio-additive -fuel blending, characterization of blending, and evaluation of fuel efficiency. The effect of concentration of the bio-additives was examined towards three diesel fuels; dexlite, pertamina-dex, and biosolar. The results showed two main fractions of citronella oil; citronellal dominant component (FA) and citronellol-geraniol dominant components (FB). The concentration variation of bio-additives was 0.1–0.5%. Fuel consumption efficiency was tested using diesel engine at an engine speed of 2000 rpm and a load increment of 1000, 2000 and 3000 psi with 7 min running time. The fractions represented the different tendencies to enhance the fuel efficiency up to 46%, influenced by the mixture’s concentration. Generally, citronella oil and the fractions showed the potency as bio-additive to diesel fuels.