Effect of Turbo Charging on the Performance of Dual Fuel (DF) Engine Operated on Rice Bran Oil Methyl Ester (RBOME) and Coconut Shell Derived Producer Gas Induction

Abstract

Producer gas operated diesel/biodiesel dual fuel engines suffer from 20-30% derating due to lowered gas energy content and reduced volumetric efficiency. These drawbacks of dual fuel (DF) engines can be overcome by using a suitable turbocharger (TC) matched to the modified diesel engine. Concept of the turbo-charging is an attractive solution to considerably improve the performance with lower emissions for DF engines. In view of this, comprehensive experimental study was carried out on a diesel engine fitted with TC operated in DF mode using biodiesel of rice bran oil and producer gas derived from Coconut shell induction. From the study it is observed that DF engine could operate at higher loads of 3.33 kW (up to 90% load) compared to normal aspirated (NA) DF engine which operated at 2.96 kW (80% load). Results showed that the turbo-charging facilitated improved performance of TCDF at higher loads with maximum brake thermal efficiency of 22.5% and 10-25% reduced emissions of smoke, HC and CO compared to NADF engine. Keywords: