Analysis of cylinder to cylinder variation of combustion parameters of an automotive CRDI engine and comparison of experimental and theoretical investigation for optimization of its fuel and operating parameters fuelled with biodiesel higher alcohol blends

Abstract

A medium duty 3 cylinder CRDI passenger car diesel engine was tested by operating at different speed and torque, fuelled with biodiesel (20 % Jatropha methyl ester + 80 % diesel) and performance and emission characteristics of the CRDI engine were investigated and compared with those of diesel. Higher magnitude of brake thermal efficiency was noticed with the Jatropha methyl ester (JME) fueled engine for all the operating torque values iv for both 1500 rpm as well as 2500 rpm and slightly lower brake thermal efficiency for higher torque values when operated at 2000 rpm. NOx emission was witnessed to be lower when operated at lower engine speed and the same was found to be higher when operated with higher speed for JME ester when compared with that of diesel. As the NOx and smoke emission are the two major pollutants from the diesel engine, an attempt was made for the chosen CRDI engine, to reduce its NOx and smoke emission with less compromise on its performance. Experiments were designed by adopting design of experiments procedure and NOx, smoke and brake thermal efficiency (BTE) were selected as responses for the present work. It was inferred that fuel and operating parameters have significant influence on the chosen responses and have to be selected as factors for the investigation.