Performance and Emission Characteristics Analysis of Diesel Engine with Preheated Blends of Castor Methyl Ester (CME) and Diesel

Diesel engines are favorably used in power generation, transportation and water pumping. Continuous depletion of petroleum products and increased pollution has been promoting research for alternating fuels. Biodiesel is one of the possible renewable sources for diesel engines, as it is miscible in almost all petroleum products. Transesterification is a process that modifies the molecular structure of vegetable oils to produce biodiesel, an alternative fuel. Without any hardware modification it can be used in any existing design of diesel engine. This paper contains performance and emission characteristics analysis of diesel (CI) engine with preheated biodiesel blends of methyl ester with castor oil and diesel, at different temperatures. Different engine performance parameters such as brake thermal efficiency (BTE), brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC) also emission parameters like CO, NOx, CO2, HC and O2 are checked and results are compared with engine performance with pure diesel. Experimental work is carried out on single cylinder CI engine at constant rpm for no load, part load and full load condition with same compression ratio. It is observed that with satisfactory performance of CI engine, reduced emission levels are observed.