Experimental evaluation of a diesel engine for combustion, performance and exhaust emissions with fuel blends derived from a mixture of fish waste oil and waste cooking oil biodiesel

Abstract

The production of biodiesel fuel for diesel engines from waste oil resources resolves a triple-faceted problem: environmental, economic and waste management. This study aimed to extract oil from fish waste, to convert the extracted oil into biodiesel fuel through base catalyzed transesterification and to reduce waste disposal-related environmental problems. Various fuel blends (CBFM10, CBFM20, CBFM30, CBFM40 and CBFM50) were prepared from a 1:1 mixture of waste canola oil biodiesel (WCOB) and transesterified fish waste oil (TFWO) with different proportions of mineral diesel. The mixture was named as the composite blends of fuel mixtures (CBFM). The fuel mixtures were subjected to physicochemical properties like kinematic viscosity, density, flash point and calorific values that were found with the international standard limits of biodiesel fuel and comparable to those of petroleum diesel with an added benefit to be lower in price being derived from waste resources. The formulated fuel blends were run in a 5.5kW stationary diesel engine to investigate combustion, performance and emission characteristics. In comparison to petroleum diesel, slightly higher BSFC, marginally lower BTE and shorter ignition delay was observed with CBFM fuel blends. As compared to fossil fuel diesel carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrocarbons (HC) were found to decrease by 2.8-25.1% and 2.2-19.9%, respectively. In comparison to all tested fuel blends, CBFM10 has shown lower nitrogen oxide emissions. The tested fuel blends were found to have great potential to be utilized as cheap and easily handled alternative fuels for compression ignition (CI) engines without any modification in any part of the engine.