Experimental Analysis of Performance and Emissions of a Diesel Engine Fuelled With Biodiesels (Mahua and Neem)

The use of nonedible vegetable oils as an alternative fuel for diesel engine is accelerated by the energy crisis due to depletion of resources, oil prices and increased environmental degradation, as well as the great need for edible oil as food and the reduction of biodiesel production cost, etc. Abundance of nonedible vegetable oils which can be exploited for substitute fuel as diesel fuel, two vegetable oils, i.e., mahua and neem oils, were selected for discussion in this paper. There exists a big difference in the fuel properties of two nonedible vegetable oils and its biodiesels considered in this research paper. The target of current research includes testing a medium capacity water-cooled diesel engine fuelled with different biodiesel/diesel fuel blends, i.e., MB10D90 (10% mahua biodiesel with 90% diesel) and NB10D90 (10% neem biodiesel with 90% diesel) which were prepared by volumetric ratio and analysing brake-specific energy consumption, brake thermal efficiency on the performance aspects while studying nitrogen oxides (NO_x), carbon monoxide (CO), hydro carbon (HC) and smoke opacity on the emission aspects with an objective to find out the optimum biodiesel/fuel blend to be run on diesel engine without any modifications. It is clear that during experiments, biodiesel generally causes an increase in NO_x emission and a decrease in HC, CO and smoke opacity emissions compared to diesel fuel.