INVESTIGATION OF PERFORMANCE AND EMISSION CHARACTERISTICS OF DI DIESEL ENGINE FUELLED WITH MAHUA ETHYL ESTERS

Abstract

The utilization of diesel engine is continuously increasing due to higher fuel to power ratio and efficient. But, it causes increasing the emissions and the fossil petroleum products are also diminishing rapidly. Thus, it is essential to substitute the diesel fuel with non-edible vegetable oils and animal fat oils. In the present investigation diesel was replaced by Mahua Oil Ethyl Esters (MOEE) with a variety of compositions (M10, M20, M30, and M40) to analyse the performance and the emission characteristics of the diesel engine. In the present experimental work, the engine was made to run on constant speed at varied load conditions. Based on the performance analysis of present investigation M30 gave enhanced results, compared to the pure diesel and the other blends. Therefore, M30 was taken as an optimized blend. For that blend, the air preheating and supercharging was used. The air pre- heating at 60ºC of M30 showed the improvement of mechanical efficiency and brake thermal efficiency when compared with the diesel and all other blends of MOEE. Since, the blends of MOEE have more oxygen content it reduces the emissions of HC, CO, and Smoke compared to pure diesel.