Nowadays, biofuels are a promising alternative to the use of fossil fuels. However, increasing the amount of biofuels introduced in fuels requires to know their impact on emissions pollutants.The work done in this thesis can be described in two parts: The first one deals with the evaluation of emissions of regulated pollutants (NOx, CO, CO2, O2, THC) and unregulated pollutants (volatile organic compounds, carbonyl compounds and fine particles (between 30 nm and 10 microns)) emitted by the combustion of biofuels in a diesel engine. Different biofuels have been tested: methyl esters of soybean oil and rapeseed oil, ethyl esters of used oil and a reference fuel free of biofuel. The results show that the nature of biofuels and their content have an impact on the pollutants emitted. For example, a decrease in the size of the particles emitted was observed with the use of methyl esters of soybean oil. The second objective of this thesis was to trap pollutants, like volatile organic compounds (VOCs) with zeolites. Several hydrophilic and hydrophobic zeolites have been synthesized and characterized. Adsorption tests were then carried by thermogravimetry with different probe molecules representative of pollutants from diesel engines (n-hexane, p-xylene and acetone). Some zeolites such as faujasite zeolites have interesting adsorption capacities. However, most of the results show a decrease in the adsorption capacity with the increase of the temperature. Then, these zeolites have been placed in the exhaust outlet of a diesel engine in order to study their adsorption capacity.
