Use of Jatropha Oil Methyl Ester and Its Blends as an Alternative Fuel in Diesel Engine

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This paper proposes the mathematical modelling using artificial neural network (ANN) for predicting the performance and emission characteristics of spark-ignition (SI) engine using tert butyl alcohol (TBA) gasoline blends. The experiments are performed with a four-stroke three cylinder carburetor type SI engine at three different revolution per minutes such as 1500, 2000, and 2500 with different blends ranging from 0% to 5% and at 10%. Experimental data are used for training an ANN model based on the feed-forward back-propagation approach for predicting the data at 6-9% with the same speeds. Results show that the blending of TBA with gasoline improves the emission characteristics compared with the gasoline. From the experimental testing data, root mean squared-error was found to be 0.9997% with the network 3-1-10. During this study, The ANN model accurately anticipates the performance and emissions of the engine.

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Thermal energy is used in the process of heating, cooling and product design purpose. In this work, two non-edible oils are considered and their thermal conductivity, specific heat and thermal degradation are experimentally determined as a function of temperature using, guarded hot plate method, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and thermogravtic analyser (TGA). Miniature difference between the obtained and actual thermal conductivity values are influenced by the fatty acid composition. In the present work Pongamia Honge Oil Methyl Ester (HOME) and Rubber Seed Oil Methyl Ester (ROME) are studied and their properties are determined experimentally for a temperature range of 25 to 80C. It has been observed that thermal conductivity of HOME decreases from 0.168 to 0.124 W/mK and for ROME thermal conductivity decreases from 0.143 to 0.113 W/mK. Thermal degradation and specific heat were studied using TGA and DSC. Specific heat was studied in the range from 35 to 120 C. For HOME, the specific heat varies from 2.345 to 2.64 kJ/kgK. For ROME, the specific heat varies from 1.572 to 1.992 kJ/kgK.

Biomass derived vegetable oils are quite promising alternative fuels for agricultural diesel engines. Use of vegetable oils in diesel engines leads to slightly inferior performance and higher smoke emissions due to their high viscosity. The performance of vegetable oils can be improved by modifying them through the Transesterification process. In this present work, the performance of single cylinder water-cooled diesel engine using methyl-ester of Jatropha oil as the fuel was evaluated for its performance and exhaust emissions. The fuel properties of biodiesel such as kinematic viscosity, calorific value, flash point, carbon residue and specific gravity were found. Results indicated that B25 have closer performance to diesel and B100 had lower brake thermal efficiency mainly due to its high viscosity compared to diesel. The brake thermal efficiency for biodiesel and its blends was found to be slightly higher than that of diesel fuel at tested load conditions and there was no difference between the biodiesel and its blended fuels efficiencies. For Jatropha biodiesel and its blended fuels, the exhaust gas temperature increased with increase in power and amount of biodiesel. However, its diesel blends showed reasonable efficiencies, lower smoke, CO 2 , CO and HC.