Investigations on performance of a mini boiler using vegetable oils

Abstract

In this research work straight vegetable oils such as sunflower oil and rice bran oil have been proposed as alternate fuels blended with diesel after the investigation on various edible and non edible fuels including sunflower oil soy bean oil jatropha oil rice bran oil and waste plant oil etc Sunflower oil and rice bran oil have been blended with diesel at different proportions 10 25 and 50 with diesel and named respectively as SFVO10 SFVO25 and SFVO50 for sunflower oil blends and RBVO10 RBVO25 and RBVO50 for rice bran oil blends A mini fire tube boiler has been fabricated with a shell of 30 cm diameter and 60 cm long having four single pass fire tubes to produce hot water Experiments have been conducted in three levels first level involved a commercial burner supplying primary air for combustion of fuel blends In the second level enhancement of the performance of the mini boiler has been investigated by introducing an additional air supply system to supply sufficient oxygen molecules to complete the combustion Finally in the third level, performance enhancement has been studied by employing compressed air for spray formation and atomization In all the three investigations mini boiler has been used to raise the temperature of water from 40 C to 80 C. newline