Technical Paper
Performance, Emission and Combustion Characteristics of an Agricultural Diesel Engine Fuelled with Blends of Calophyllum Vegetable Oil and Isopropyl Alcohol
2015-01-14
2015-26-0055
Use of diluting agents in neat vegetable oil to reduce its density and viscosity, is arguably the best alternative route for vegetable oil usage in diesel engines. It is suitable where the complex transesterification process for biodiesel production is not feasible. In this study, Calophyllum vegetable oil was diluted with 10%, 20% and 30% by volume of Isopropyl alcohol and named as CI10, CI20 and CI30 respectively. Neat diesel was termed as D100. An exhaustive field trial on a single cylinder agricultural diesel engine indicated that full load brake thermal efficiency of D100 was 26.4% followed by CI10, CI20 and CI30 test fuels. Emissions of carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and smoke were impressively reduced by a margin of 17-63% for the isopropyl alcohol containing test fuels as compared to the diesel baseline. However, oxides of nitrogen emissions were marginally higher for the isopropyl alcohol blends.
