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Over the past several years, there has been increased interest in reformulated and alternative diesel fuel to control emissions and provide energy independence. As public concern about environmental pollution and energy security increases, alternative transportation fuels, such as compressed natural gas (CNG), liquefied natural gas (LNG), and bio-fuels are receiving more and more attention. Oil seed plants have been one of the biomass sources of fuel. In this study, use of macro- emulsion of vegetable oil in compression ignition engine as an alternative diesel fuel is carried out. The emphasize in this study is on non- edible vegetable oil as they are not used in house hold purposes. The macro-emulsion of linseed oil and mahua oil with neat diesel and alcohol in varying proportion were prepared and their properties in view of their suitability as a diesel fuel were evaluated. Also their performance and emission characteristics were tested in the C.I. engine.

As neat crude palm oil is not ideally suitable as a fuel for diesel engines because of its high viscosity; process of transesterification was adopted to develop methyl ester of palm oil that approximate the properties and performance of hydrocarbon-based diesel fuel. Various properties of the methyl ester of palm oil were evaluated and compared in relation with that of neat diesel. The prepared methyl ester of palm oil, blended in different concentrations with neat diesel was then subjected to performance and emission tests in order to evaluate its suitability in diesel engine. The data thus generated were compared with base line data generated from neat diesel. An optimal blend of 10-20% methyl ester of palm oil with neat diesel exhibited best performance and smooth engine operation without any symptoms of undesired combustion phenomenon. This suggests use of 10-20% of biodiesel developed from palm oil in diesel engine with out any difficulty.