Influence of various blends of karanja oil with pure diesel on performance, emission and combustion characteristics of diesel engine: An experimental investigation

Abstract

An experimental investigation has been carried out to analyze the performance parameters, emissions and combustion characteristics of a diesel engine fuelled with blends of karanja oil (10, 20, 30, 40, and 50%) with diesel at different load conditions. The blend K50D50 shows maximum indicated power of about 50W than that of pure diesel at 72% load to full load. The blend K50D50 shows 4% greater mechanical efficiency than that of pure diesel at 50% of the load. The blend K50D50 has been showing greater brake thermal efficiency than pure diesel from 47% to 76% of the load. At no load condition, the specific fuel consumption of blend K50D50 is less than that of pure diesel of about 0.5 kg/kWh. The blend K50D50 emits lowest HC emission among all blends and pure diesel irrespective of various loads. However, CO emissions are still comparable to pure diesel. The blend K50D50 emits the lowest quantity of smoke among all blends and pure diesel for an average load. The blend K50D50 shows higher peak cylinder pressure is about 2.21bar than that of pure diesel at full load. In the blended fuel operation, the mean gas temperature, the rate of pressure rise and net heat release rate are higher by about 324 – 37 70 C, 1.31 – 1.57 bar/0 CA and 9 – 13 J/0 CA than those of pure diesel respectively. The result reveals that K50D50 is the optimum blend among all blend without any modification of the engine.