Had similar issue.
That’s working code from the controller :
$config = array();
$config['useragent'] = "CodeIgniter";
$config['mailpath'] = "/usr/bin/sendmail"; // or "/usr/sbin/sendmail"
$config['protocol'] = "smtp";
$config['smtp_host'] = "localhost";
$config['smtp_port'] = "25";
$config['mailtype'] = 'html';
$config['charset'] = 'utf-8';
$config['newline'] = "\r\n";
$config['wordwrap'] = TRUE;
$this->load->library('email');
$this->email->initialize($config);
$this->email->from($fromEmail, $fromName);
$this->email->to($email);
$this->email->subject('ТеÑÑ Email');
$this->email->message($this->load->view('email/'.$type.'-html', $data, TRUE));
$this->email->send();