Development and current situation of ester oxygenated fuels application

With the aggravation of global energy consumption, the limited petrochemical fuel has been difficult to meet people's demand for energy, while the number of vehicles is increasing, which makes the harmful pollutants emitted by vehicles to the atmosphere increase sharply. In order to strictly control the environmental pollution caused by vehicle exhaust emissions, countries around the world have issued increasingly stringent emission standards in recent years. The legislative goal of these emission regulations is to strictly control the emission pollutants including carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, and soot particles. Therefore, with the increasingly stringent emission standards for motor vehicles, many scholars at home and abroad have paid close attention to new alternative fuels for motor vehicles, including oxygenated fuels. From the perspective of energy security and environmental protection, countries have begun to look for new combustion modes to realize efficient and clean combustion of internal combustion engines.As a substitute or additive of petrochemical fuel, ester oxygenated fuel can provide additional oxygen during combustion, which is helpful to solve the problems of low air pressure and insufficient air intake encountered by motor vehicles in plateau areas. At the same time, it can fully burn the fuel, improve the physicochemical properties of the fuel, and reduce the emissions of air pollution such as carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and soot particles, so as to reduce the emissions of harmful substances and improve the combustion performance. Therefore, the development of new ester oxygenated fuel has the dual significance of environmental protection and alleviating the dependence on petrochemical fuel. In this paper, the physicochemical properties, emission characteristics and application in internal combustion engines of biodiesel, long chain fatty acid ether ester, carbonate, ether ester and levulinic acid ester clean oxygenated fuels were discussed, the advantages and disadvantages of ester oxygenated fuels were analyzed, and the application trend and future research suggestions of ester oxygenated fuels were pointed out. © 2021, Editorial Department of the Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering. All right reserved.