Encontro de Energia no Meio Rural
Agrener

Abstract

SOARES, Guilherme F.W., VIEIRA, Leonardo S.R. and NASCIMENTO, Marcos V. G. Operação de um grupo gerador diesel utilizando óleo vegetal bruto como combustível. In Proceedings of the 3. Encontro de Energia no Meio Rural, 2000, Campinas (SP, Brazil) [online]. 2003 [cited 26 April 2024]. Available from: <http://www.proceedings.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=MSC0000000022000000200048&lng=en&nrm=iso> .

When supplying electricity to small isolated villages by means of generator sets, the use of locally produced vegetable oil as fuel instead of diesel can be economically atractive due to difficulties and increased costs associated with the transportation of diesel to these remote locations. With this perspective in mind, the technical and economical aspects related to the operation of a typical generator set using raw palm oil as fuel were evaluated during a test of 400 hours. The generator set employed is rated 76kVA/60kW for continuous operation and is equiped with a MWM D229-6 engine with direct injection, 6 cylinders and unit displacement of 0.98 liters. The main problems found during the operation with vegetable oil were: 1) early contamination of the lubricant oil with unburned vegetable oil, requiring more frequent changes of the lubricant oil than usual; 2) carbonization of combustion chambers and particle deposition in the injection pump and nozzles, causing a gradual loss of power. This was reversible with cleaning. Due to increased maintenance costs when operating with vegetable oil, it was estimated that it could be competitive with diesel only in localities where the price of the latter is 25% or more above the price of vegetable oil. A comprehensive analysis of the results from these tests and from other similar tests reported indicates that a tighter control of the vegetable oil quality, along with the employment of indirect injection engines, would be desirable to decrease maintenance costs to the level normally found when operating with diesel.

Keywords : Óleo vegetal; dendê; palma; gerador; diesel.