Some Studies on Performance and Emission Characteristics of Diesel Engine using Biodiesel as Alternative Fuel

Abstract

In India, production of crude oil is only 20% of total consumption of petroleum newlineproducts and transport sector alone consumes 69% of the total diesel consumption. It is newlinepredicted that the total reserve of mineral diesel will be exhausted within short span of years. newlineThe transport sector is one of the major contributors to air pollution, which is the root cause newlineof several respiratory diseases. newlineIn order to counter the energy and environmental crisis, many countries in the world have newlineadopted biodiesel as alternative fuel due to its multiple positive aspects as compared to newlinemineral diesel. In India, the thrust has been given to non-edible vegetable oils for biodiesel newlineproduction and jatropha has been considered as the most suitable tree borne oil seed. But newlinejatropha plant needs cultivation, which may affect other crop production. The mahua is one of newlinethe non-edible oil plants widely available in India. The annual production of mahua seed is newlinealso appreciable and can be used in the biodiesel programme in the country. newlineIn this thesis, the properties of jatropha and mahua biodiesel have been compared with newlinedifferent standards. It is observed that problems associated with jatropha biodiesel is its low newlineoxidation stability and with mahua biodiesel is poor cold flow characteristics. So, to improve newlinethe properties, biodiesel has been blended with mineral diesel and different properties have newlinebeen studied. newlineFurther, the oxidation and storage stability has been studied and found that mahua biodiesel is newlinemore stable than jatropha biodiesel in different environmental conditions. It is also found that newlinethe oxidation stability of the mixture of jatropha and mahua biodiesel (equal volume each) i.e. newlinemixed biodiesel satisfies different standards. newlineFurther engine output characteristics and emission aspects of mahua biodiesel, jatropha newlinebiodiesel and mixed biodiesel and their blends have been carried out in a diesel engine and newlinefound that engine s performance of jatropha biodiesel is better than that of mahua biodiesel newlinebut its