Effective Utilization of Low Carbon Fuels in Agricultural Engines Using Low Cost Electronic Primary Fuel Injection Unit

Reliability and cost effectiveness of electronics demands its usage in all the wings of science and technology. Thus an attempt was made in this work to investigate the potential of using electronics for injecting primary fuel for the compression ignition engine used by farmers for agricultural purpose. In the first phase of the work, a new Electronic Control Unit (ECU) for primary fuel injection was developed and tested for its repeatability on fuel injection quantity for the different input voltages. Test engine was developed and tested under various load condition for its performance, emission, and combustion characteristics with neat diesel and Waste Cooking Oil Methyl Esters (WCOME) as baseline readings in the second phase of the work. In the third phase of work, the developed engine was modified to operate in duel fuel mode with developed ECU. In this work, ethanol was chosen as primary fuel due to its availability and less toxic nature as compared to other green fuels. Pilot fuel (i.e. WCOME) was injected using mechanical fuel injection system. Results inferred that the brake thermal efficiency was increased by 33.33% with newly developed injection system. The results also inferred that harmful carbon based emissions were simultaneously reduced with the modified engine because of the precise metering of primary fuel using ECU. On the point of commercialization, cost involved in developing the new ECU was found to be very low as compared to conventional fuel injection system. In addition to the above point, developed duel fuel engine with ECU also helped in the utilization of renewable energy resources like ethanol and WCOME, as fuel in diesel engine which indirectly helps in the effective waste management of molasses from the sugar industry as well as waste cooking oil. Hence it can be concluded that, the low cost duel fuel compression ignition engine has great potential in future for agricultural purpose.