An Experimental Assessment of Waste Transformer Oil and Palm Oil Biodiesel Blended with Diesel Fuel on A Single Cylinder Direct in Diesel Engine

Abstract

The present work emphasized overall viability study of using waste transformer oil (WTO) and its combinations on a diesel engine. To accomplish this fuel samples were divided into three sets with different volumetric proportions. Each set of fuel is compared with the others and finally, the reference fuel is regular diesel. After thorough characterization and utilizing spectroscopic methods like CHNS analysis and FTIR, the performance and emission evaluation was done on a one-cylinder diesel engine. It has been discovered that the flash point, calorific value, and viscosity of WTO blends are more than regular diesel fuel. The WTO blends have higher carbon content than diesel but higher Sulphur content than diesel fuel. WTO and its blends have some similar functional groups as diesel fuel. According to the performance and emission evaluation, the diesel engine is capable of operating even when fueled with raw WTO. Among all the samples tested, WTO20 BD10D70 shows the most satisfactory result. The brake thermal efficiency of WTO20BD10D70 was almost similar to diesel fuel, while BSFC and BSEC were found to be only 4.73% and 3.46% higher than diesel fuel, respectively. The exhaust gas temperature was 8% lower than diesel. However, HC emission of WTO20BD10D70 was 20% more than diesel fuel, while CO and NOx emissions were 14% and 4.75% lower than diesel fuel. So, the sample code with WTO20BD10D70 can be recommended as a substitute for regular diesel fuel.