Application of Taguchi’s Orthogonal Array in Multi Response Optimization of NO&amp;lt;sub&amp;gt;x&amp;lt;/sub&amp;gt; Emission of Crude Rice Bran Oil Methyl Ester Blend as a CI Engine Fuel

Subramani Saravanan,Govindan Nagarajan,Santhanam Sampath

doi:10.4236/ojop.2012.12005

Abstract

In this work an attempt was made to minimize the NOx emission of a crude rice bran oil methyl ester (CRBME) blend with less sacrifice on smoke density and brake thermal efficiency. Three factors namely fuel injection timing, percentage EGR and fuel injection pressure were chosen as the influencing factors for the set objective. Experiments were designed by employing design of experiments method and Taguchi’s L9 orthogonal array was used to test the engine. MRSN ratio was calculated for the response variables and the optimum combination level of factors was obtained simultaneously using Taguchi’s parametric design. ANOVA was employed to analyze the variance of MRSN and the most influencing factor for the set objective was taken from the ANOVA table. Obtained combination was confirmed experimentally and significant improvement was observed in the response variables.

Highlights

Biodiesel, a clean burning renewable fuel derived from vegetable oil and animal fats is considered as the generation fuel which reduces the dependency on fossil fuel and the harmful pollutants
Reduction in NOx emission through exhaust gas treatment can be considered only in those cases where the emission standards cannot be met by combustion process modification alone and the combustion process modification method is the most economical method for NOx reduction [6] and this paper presents one of such modification processes to reduce the NOx emission
multi response signal to noise ratio (MRSN) ratio obtained with different combinations of weighting factors was further analysed through Analysis of Variance (ANOVA)

Summary

Introduction

A clean burning renewable fuel derived from vegetable oil and animal fats is considered as the generation fuel which reduces the dependency on fossil fuel and the harmful pollutants. In-cylinder control and exhaust gas treatment are the two important techniques for the control of NOx emission [6]. In the former method combustion process was modified through retardation of fuel injection timing, EGR, fuel additives and water injection to prevent the formation of NOx [7]. In the latter method exhaust gas was treated with the help of catalysts to remove the formed NOx completely [8,9,10,11,12]. Reduction in NOx emission through exhaust gas treatment can be considered only in those cases where the emission standards cannot be met by combustion process modification alone and the combustion process modification method is the most economical method for NOx reduction [6] and this paper presents one of such modification processes to reduce the NOx emission

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion