Boosting the Cold Flow Properties and Oxidation Stability of Diesel-Biodiesel Blends by Novel Polymethacrylate Graft Copolymer Nanocomposites

Abstract

The applications and development of biodiesel fuels are restricted by their poor low- temperature fluidity and oxidation stability. To address these defects, our study explored a 4-Amino-2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidine grafted poly-tetradecyl methacrylate-ferric oxide nanocomposite as multifunctional additives of biodiesel fuels. The additives exhibit excellent synchronous improvement effects on the cold flow properties and oxidation stability of B20 (20 vol%. biodiesel + 80 vol%. diesel). Our findings reveal that after adding 1000 ppm of additive PTM10-CA-TP-Fe1% into B20, the pour point (PP) and cold filter plugging point (CFPP) are decreased by 20 and 16 oC, respectively, and the oxidation induction time is extended from 2.0 to 6.9 h. In addition, DFT calculations simulating the potential energy changes of B20 solutions forecast copolymer structure affects the low-temperature fluidity. It is confirmed that the improvement effects are further enhanced after the copolymers are grafted with antioxidants and copolymerized with ferric oxide nanoparticles, which proves that the synergistic enhancement effects of additives on the drawbacks of B20. This study proposes an elegant strategy for developing the synergistic improvement effects on the cold flow properties and oxidation stability of biodiesel blends using copolymer nanocomposites and a theoretical prediction for exploring optimum copolymers for fuel’s low-temperature fluidity.

Keywords: Biodiesel fuels, Cold flow properties, Oxidation stability, Copolymer nanocomposites, Multifunctional additives, Molecular dynamics calculations.