Experimental investigation of performance and emission characteristics of a diesel engine fuelled with simarouba oil and its blend

Abstract

The ecosphere is attaining restructure and technologically advanced day by day. As an outcome of increasing automobiles and machines the energy sources used in these machines are limited progressively. It makes to search for a standby fuel for diesel engine is biodiesel. The main objectives are, to match performance and emission characteristics of biodiesel derived from simarouba oil in a diesel engine with base line results of diesel fuel. The performance factors evaluated are: Brake Thermal Efficiency (BTE), BSFC (brake specific fuel consumption). The emission parameters such as carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2), un-burnt hydrocarbon (HC) with the different proportion of mixtures were also measured and related with base line results. The BTE of simarouba oil and its mixtures with diesel are lower than diesel and brake specific energy consumption was found to be greater. However, HC, CO and CO2 are found to be lower with simarouba biodiesel oil. The results suggested that, biodiesel from simarouba oil could be a good standby to diesel fuel in diesel engine and could be used without any modifications in the future as far as decentralized energy production is concerned.