Utilization of Blends of Biodiesel and Higher Alcohols in a Small Capacity Diesel Engine 2019-01-0580

Diesel engine widely uses in India in farming, transportation, and industrial sectors due to higher thermal efficiency, robust construction and heavy load carrying capacity. However, diesel engine emits a large number of gaseous emissions and particulate matter which caused serious detrimental environmental consequences and health hazards. The use of biofuel has shown a positive impact in resolving these issues of environmental degradation.

India is also a net importer of petroleum-derived fuels and a substantial amount in precious foreign exchange is spent for this. In the last three decades in India, a lot of research work on renewable diesel-like fuels have been carried out, and the most promising of them is biodiesel. However,Biodiesel suffers from the drawback of relatively higher kinematic viscosity. But higher alcohols such as n-butanol and n-octanol could be blended with the biodiesel to bring its properties similar to diesel fuel. In present studies, biodiesel was prepared from jatropha oil (JO). Jatropha oil methyl ester (JOME) was separately blended with higher alcohols in proportions of 10% and 20% on volume basis. Phase stability suggested that there was no separation even a period of forty-five days. The physio-chemical properties were comparable with diesel. The experimental study on a single cylinder diesel engine showed that brake thermal efficiency (BTE) for the blends of biodiesel and higher alcohol was lower than diesel. The HC emissions were lower than diesel, while NO_x emission was higher than diesel but lower than the neat JOME. It can be concluded that the blend of higher alcohols with biodiesel is an attractive proposition for the reduction of NO_x emissions from the biodiesel-fueled engine and comparable performance with the diesel-fueled engine.