Abstract
In the present work, biodiesel prepared from Tropical almond oil (Terminalia Catappa) was used as fuel in C. I engine. Performance studies were conducted on a single cylinder four-stroke water-cooled compression ignition engine. Experiments were conducted for different percentage of blends of Tropical almond ester with diesel at different injection timings. Experimental investigations on the performance parameters from the engine were done. Artificial neural network (ANN) of back-propagation feed-forward Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm was used to predict the performance characteristics of the engine. An ANN model was developed for the performance parameters. To train the network, blend percentage, percentage load and injection timings were used as the input variables whereas engine performance parameters (brake thermal efficiency, exhaust gas temperature, and brake specific fuel consumption) were used as the output variables. The obtained experimental results were used to train the network structure. Results showed very good correlation between the ANN predicted values and the desired values for various engine performance values. Mean relative error values were less than 10 percent which by many standards is acceptable. The results show that ANN is an accurately reliable tool for the prediction of engine performance.
Highlights
The agricultural sector in Nigeria is completely dependent on diesel for its power and to some extent for stationary applications
Biodiesel fuels possess physicochemical properties that are similar to fossil based diesel [5] and can be used in compression ignition engine without modification; and it has been identified as a good alternative renewable fuel [6,7].Based on feedstock, there exist four groups of biofuels and they are: first, second, third, and fourth generation biofuels [8]
First generation biofuels are derived from starch and sugar based crops; while the second generation biofuels are derived from non-edible feed stocks such as agricultural residues, waste products, lignocellulosic plant biomasses, and plant oil containing seeds
Summary
The agricultural sector in Nigeria is completely dependent on diesel for its power and to some extent for stationary applications. Biodiesel fuels possess physicochemical properties that are similar to fossil based diesel [5] and can be used in compression ignition engine without modification; and it has been identified as a good alternative renewable fuel [6,7].Based on feedstock, there exist four groups of biofuels and they are: first, second, third, and fourth generation biofuels [8]. First generation biofuels are derived from starch and sugar based crops (e.g. sugar cane, wheat, barley, rice etc.); while the second generation biofuels are derived from non-edible feed stocks such as agricultural residues (e.g. lemon peel, corn waste etc.), waste products (e.g. waste cooking oil), lignocellulosic plant biomasses, and plant oil containing seeds (croton megalacorpus tropical almond etc.). The use of tropical almond which is not a major food plant to produce biodiesel solves the issue of food-versus-fuel argument
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