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Waste cooking oils can be converted into fuels to provide economical and environmental benefits. One option is to use such fuels in stationary engines for electricity generation, co-generation or tri-generation application. In this study, biodiesel derived from waste cooking oil was tested in an indirect injection type 3-cylinder Lister Petter biodiesel engine. We compared the combustion and emission characteristics with that of fossil diesel operation. The physical and chemical properties of pure biodiesel (B100) and its blends (20% and 60% vol.) were measured and compared with those of diesel. With pure biodiesel fuel, full engine power was achieved and the cylinder gas pressure diagram showed stable operation. At full load, peak cylinder pressure of B100 operation was almost similar to diesel and peak burn rate of combustion was about 13% higher than diesel. For biodiesel operation, occurrences of peak burn rates were delayed compared to diesel.

In recent years, various biodiesels have been developed to decrease pollutant emissions from compression ignition engine. However, the current research focuses on reducing the pollutant components without considering the mechanical vibration that occurred due to the changes in fuel properties such as viscosity, calorific values, density, and bulk modulus. It is important to explore the relationships between fuel properties and engine vibration. Mechanical vibration could cause power loss and affect the lifetime of the engine. In this investigation, a lister-pitter 3-cylinder diesel engine was used to analyse the mechanical vibration of three different fuels including diesel, waste cooking oil biodiesel (WCOB), and lamb fat biodiesel (LFB). The high-frequency vibration sensors were mounted on the cylinder head to monitor and assess the vibration performance.

Although waste animal fats such as chicken fat are promising alternative energy sources, biodiesels produced from these type of feedstocks hardly satisfies the EN14214 biodiesel standards. In this study, biomixtures were prepared by blending cottonseed biodiesel and chicken rendering fat biodiesel which were produced via transesterification method. Biodiesels were blended with each other at 60/40, 50/50 and 30/70 volume ratios to produce CO60CH40, CO50CH50 and CO30CH70 fuels. First, fuel properties of the neat biodiesels and novel biomixtures were measured and compared to European biodiesel standards and diesel. Then, the engine performance, combustion characteristics and exhaust emissions of these novel biomixture fuels were measured in a three-cylinder indirect injection diesel engine under various engine loads and at constant speed of 1500 rpm. The fuel characterisation showed that CO60CH40 and CO50CH50 biomixtures met the European standards.