A comparative study on performance characteristics of diesel engine fuelled by biodiesel blends with and without Ge-132 additive.

Abstract

The demand for growing fuel in everyday life and its risk requires a serious problem for this world. Great attention is needed to solve this problem. Biodiesel considered as alternatives to minimize the usage of conventional fuels. However, by using biodiesel, the main drawbacks are like higher density, lower heat value, high-level consumption and high nitrogen oxides that contribute to produce less engine performance and increase the exhaust emission. In order to avoid the above disadvantages, fuel additives help plays a very important role in minimizing the disadvantages of biodiesel and maintaining international fuel standards. In this experimental study, the organic germanium Ge-132 with 5ppm,8ppm and 10ppm were added into blend biodiesel B20 to investigate the effect of the additive to the biodiesel blends. The blended fuels were experimentally tested with YANMAR TF120M diesel engine at engine loads of 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% at a constant 1800 rpm engine speed. The addition of Ge-132 causing no significant negative effect on physicochemical properties. The result performance reveals the brake fuel consumption improve by 1.22%,2.38% and 3.09% for B20Ge5, B20Ge8 and B20Ge10 compared to B20. Compare to B20, the percentage different of B20 with Ge-132 improve about 0.41%-6.17% and 0.51%-8.89% for brake thermal efficiency and exhaust gas temperature, respectively. The analysis of additive Ge-132 in biodiesel blends show the potential to be further researched as an additive due to significant improvement in performance characteristics.