International Journal of Applied Environmental Sciences

In recent years much research has been carried out to find the best alternative fuel to the conventional petroleum product. The use of all these renewable fuels like ethanol, biogas and biodiesel is very significant, which find a lot of application in the transportation and irrigation sector. As an agriculture country like India, an ample amount of diesel is required for running the water pumps from the diesel engine. In an agricultural state like Punjab a large amount of work is carried out around the years by diesel powered tube wells as the rainy period is very short due to its geographical position. This has created a wide gap between the demand and supply of diesel fuel and it is having a society economic impact on the poor farmers.

The focus of present research is to find out the proper set up for the production of bio-diesel from Jatropha oil for the rural areas so that the biodiesel may be applied in irrigation purpose. Further, an experiment program examining performance has been carried out to investigate different design parameters, which influence the engine performance of the 4-stroke vertical single cylinder direct injection compression ignition engine running on 100% biodiesel as fuel. Initially, a small amount of bio-diesel from Jatropha seeds has been prepared and various samples of biodiesel were tested and analyzed for various fuel properties. Then CI engine was run on the different blends of biodiesel fuels (B20, B40, B60, B80, B100 and conventional diesel fuel) and engine performance was examined experimentally. Experimental analysis of engine performance indicates that the low-level blends of biodiesel (B20 and less) does not require any engine modifications and can provide the same payload capacity and range as conventional diesel with slight reduction of engine efficiency. Experimental results further show that a small modification is essential in case of higher blends of biodiesel, as pure biodiesel does not perform well in cold weather conditions because of thickening; and henceforth requires some special arrangements to compensate for this. Diesel fuels blended with biodiesel are better lubricators, which reduces engine wear and tear, making the life of engine components last longer.

The experimental investigation shows that the brake thermal efficiency decreases with increase of bio diesel fuel. It is also examined that fuel consumption (Kg/min) also increases with the load for different blends of bio diesel (B20, B40, B60, B80 and B100). The objective of this study is finding the possibility of using 100% bio diesel fuel with slight modification in the engine for the irrigation purpose.