A Comparative Study on Performance and Emission Characteristics of Compression Ignition Engine using Biodiesel Derived from Non-Edible Feedstocks 2013-01-2676

The increasing demands of energy in various sectors and environmental concerns have stimulated the scientific community to look for alternative fuels of bio-origin such as vegetable oils. Vegetable oils can be produced from forests, vegetable oil crops and oil bearing biomass materials. In the present study, non-edible vegetable oils such as Tung (Aleurites fordii), Karanja (Pongamia pinnata) and Jatropha (Jatropha curcas) methyl esters were produced and blended with diesel fuel in different proportions. An experimental investigation was carried out to analyze the performance and emission characteristics of a compression ignition engine fuelled with blends of biodiesel and diesel fuel. Engine performance and emission analysis were performed using biodiesel blends (10%,15%,20% and 50% of Tung, Jatropha and Karanja) in 4.4 kW single cylinder air cooled four stroke compression ignition engine at different loads. It was observed that performance characteristics like brake thermal efficiency (BTE), brake specific fuel consumptions (BSFC) with 15% Tung methyl ester and 20% Karanja methyl ester and 20% Jatropha methyl ester were comparable to diesel fuel. The emission characteristics like CO, HC and smoke were lower at all the engine load conditions compared to diesel fuel however, NOx emission was observed to be higher for all the biodiesel blends.