Performance Evaluation of CI Engine with Pretreated Pongamia Biodiesel

As India and other developing countries cannot afford to use the edible oils for biodiesel production, many research efforts have been initiated to use the non edible oils for the purpose. Pongamia is one of the non edible forestry biofuel crop which can grow in low fertile and marginal lands. The production of Pongamia seed oil on commercial basis will only successful, if the post harvest operations are mechanized. The performance of stationary diesel engines using different non-edible oil esters are tried in many parts of the world by solely and blending with diesel. Majority of the findings reported that, mixing 20% of biodiesel in diesel as the maximum possible blend for better engine efficiency. This paper presents the studies on CI engine performance and exhaust emissions with pretreated Pongamia methyl ester in comparison to untreated and pretreated pongamia methyl ester. The results show that the pretreated methyl ester increased the engine brake thermal efficiency with reduced brake specific fuel consumption when compared to the untreated, apart from decreasing the exhaust emissions.