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Palm is an edible feedstock which is immensely popular in Malaysia as an alternative fuel which can substitute diesel fuel. However, use of Palm biodiesel in diesel engine have a negative effect on food security, thus, in this study authors used Mustard biodiesel, which has poor fuel properties, with Palm biodiesel to produce an optimum blend. This blend will have better fuel properties compared to Mustard biodiesel and will help eliminate dependency of Palm biodiesel. To ensure that optimized blend achieves better fuel properties MATLAB optimization tool was used to find out the optimum blend ratio. Linear relationship among the fuel properties was considered for MATLAB coding. The resultant optimum blend is represented by PM. Optimum blend revealed improved fuel properties compared to mustard biodiesel.

The idea of using biodiesel as substitute fuel for fossil diesel is promising. The boom in biodiesel, however, has raised increasing concern about food shortage throughout the world and may translate into a food crisis. To avoid using food resources for fuel purposes, huge emphasis is currently being put on shifting to alternative non-food feedstocks including waste cooking oils. This study investigated the effects of biodiesel derived from waste palm oil-based cooking oil on performance, exhaust emissions and combustion characteristics in a light duty compression ignition engine. A total of three sets of fuel blends were studied: 10%, 20% and 30% volumetric blends (B10, B20 and B30) of waste cooking oil methyl ester (WME) with fossil diesel. In this study, the experimental work was carried out with a single cylinder, four-stroke, direct injection compression ignition engine. The experiments were conducted under constant torque of 20 Nm and at five different engine speeds.

The use of diesel engines is increasing rapidly thanks to their superior fuel economy, higher efficiency and excellent reliability. The energy crisis of fossil fuel depletion, rising price of diesel and environmental degradation have triggered a search for clean, sustainable and alternative fuels for internal combustion engines. Biodiesel is one of the most promising and demanding alternative fuels because it is a biodegradable, non-toxic and renewable fuel. In the present work, an experimental investigation on the effect of injection timing on engine performance, emissions and combustion characteristics with coconut oil methyl ester (CME) was conducted in a high-pressure common-rail direct injection diesel engine. The tests were performed at constant speed of 2000 rpm and 50% throttle position operation. The test fuels included baseline diesel fuel and two different fuel blends of CME (B20 and B40).

Fossil fuel is depleting due to increase in usage and we are facing energy crises. For us to get out of such plight situations, scientists are looking into alternative ways to produce energy that can be attained at low cost and also eco-friendly. Biodiesel can be an effective solution in spite of some limitations to use as fuel because of poor fuel properties. From this point of view, experiment had been conducted to improve fuel properties of palm biodiesel by blending with coconut and jatropha biodiesel. MATLAB optimization tool was used to find out the optimum blend ratio to achieve overall better fuel properties. Linear relationship among the fuel properties was considered for MATLAB coding. The resultant optimum blend ratio and the equations of the MATLAB code were used to predict the fuel properties values and the experimental fuel properties values of the optimum blends were compared with the predicted values.

This research work focuses on the unsteady heat transfer and temperature distribution over the engine cooling jackets. The efforts are gestated to generate the time-dependent effects of heat transfer from the combustion chamber to the cooling jacket of a 4-cylinder 1.6-L cam-profile switching system SI engine. The characteristic behavior of heat transfer to the coolant at lower speed (idle speed/traffic signal) or when the engine is shut down after driving the vehicle for a significant period manifests unstable temperature rise with respect to time. It has been observed that the temperature of the coolant inside the jacket rises up within a very short period of time. It can be a case due to the shut off of the actuators (coolant pump, fan) which helps the cooling system to take effect according to the demand of the thermal efficiency of the engine.

This paper presents experimental test results of a new compressed natural gas direct injection (CNG-DI) engine that has been developed from modification of a multi cylinder gasoline port injection (PI) engine. The major modifications done are (1) the injection system has been modified to gas direct injection using new high pressure gas injectors, (2) compression ratio has been changed from 10 to 14 through modification of piston and cylinder head, and (3) new spark plugs with long edge were used to ignite the CNG fuel. The CNG pressure at common rail was kept at 20 bar to be injected into engine cylinder. The engine has been operated with full throttle conditions to compare all the results with original base engine such as gasoline port injection engine and the CNG bi-fuel engine where the base engine has been converted to bi-fuel injection system to be operated with gasoline and CNG fuels.

This paper presents exhaust gas emissions characteristcs of a new direct injection (DI) compressed natural gas (CNG) engine using a low cost catalytic conveter (Catco). The pollutants exhaust gas emissions measured were CO, HC and NOx with and without Catco. The Catco was developed based on catalyst materials consisting of metal oxides such as titanium dioxide (TiO2) and cobalt oxide (CoO) with wiremesh substrate. Both of the catalyst materials (such as TiO2 and CoO) are inexpensive in comparison to conventional catalysts (noble metals) such as palladium or platinum. In addition, the noble metals such as platinum group metal are now indentified as human health risk due to their rapid emissions in the environment from various resources like conventional catalytic converter, jewelers and other medical usages. It can be mentioned that both the CNG-DI engine and TiO2/CoO based catalytic converter were developed under a research collaboration program.

This paper presents experimental test results of a diesel engine using additive added bio Diesel oil obtained from palm oil. The test results obtained are brake power, specific fuel consumption (SFC) and exhaust emissions. In addition, anti-wear characteristics of fuel's contaminated lubricants were observed using a tribometer test. A computer control dynamometer-engine test bed was used to measure engine brake power and SFC at half throttle condition with speed range of 1000 rpm to 4000 rpm. The emission test was done with dynamometer fixed load of 50 Nm and constant engine speed of 2250 rpm. A total of three fuels or 100% diesel fuel (B0); 20% palm oil diesel (POD) and 80% B0 (B20); and B20 with X% additive (B20X) were selected for this investigation. The B20X is the additive added bio Diesel oil where X is the percentage (in this investigation X=1% of B20) of additive in B20 fuel.

This paper presents an experimental result carried out to evaluate exhaust gas emissions and deposit characteristics of a small diesel engine when operated on preheated crude palm oil (CPO) and its emulsions with 1%, 2% and 3% water. Non preheated CPO was not used in this investigation. The test was conducted for 100 hours using each of the test fuels with a constant speed of 2700 rpm and 5.50 Nm load. The engine was disassembled after the test to scrape carbon deposits from piston and cylinder heads. Ordinary diesel fuel (OD) scrape was used for comparison purposes. It was observed that preheated CPO reduced exhaust emissions such as containing less CO, HC and PM as compared to OD and CPO emulsified fuels. This is mainly attributed to the fact that preheating of CPO reduces its viscosity to the level of OD that improves the fuel spray and atomization characteristics as well as produces complete combustion.

Air-fuel ratio (AFR) is a crucial parameter for combustion controls in internal combustion engines. An incorrect AFR metering for reciprocating internal combustion engine causes high toxic gases emissions formulation, serious fuel consumption problems and unbearable combustion noise and combustion deterioration. Traditionally, the AFR is obtained by direct measurement of intake air and the fuel either injected into the combustion chamber or pre-mixed at the carburetor. However, the accurate AFR obtained from direct measurement is difficult due to measuring equipments resolution prone to errors. This paper describes a method for accurate determination of air-fuel ratio based on exhaust emission gas analysis as an additional tool used to be validated the conventional direct air fuel flow rates measurement.