Analytic Study of Lubricity of DME as Alternative Fuel

In recent years, there have been increased concerns for the global warming and the exhaustion of resources caused by the heavy consumption of the fossil fuel. For this reason, biomass has been brought to great attention as a renewable source of energy to mitigate the situation. In this particular area, DME (dimethyl ether) fuel produced from biomass, biogas, and coal is expected to be useful as one of the eco-friendly synthetic fuel alternatives to petrodiesel. Diesel engine need fuel lubricity due to their severe condition (high pressure and temperature) but DME have low lubricity. In this study, we developed the analytic system for DME lubricity test which is pressurized chambered tester. Also we synthesized various of biodisel from 12 kinds of vegetable oil under base catalyst system. Oxygen compounds definitely contributed to the natural lubricity of fuel, biodiesel have ester group which is polar oxygenated functional group. After prepared test system and biodiesel as lubricant, we analyzed the lubricity of neat DME, neat biodiesels and DME-lubricant blended (100 ppm to 2000 ppm) fuel.