Blends of karanja and jatropha biodiesels for diesel engine applications

Abstract

Over a number of years, the work of exploring different biodiesels as an alternative to diesel fuel has been carried out worldwide. Not much focus on the use of combination of different biodiesels and their behaviour in diesel engines has been reported. This work is an attempt in this direction, which reports on the use of combination of biodiesels derived from jatropha and karanja oils. Jatropha oil methyl ester (JOME) and honge oil methyl ester (HOME) represent the respective biodiesels derived from these non-edible oils. Experiments were conducted on a four-stroke, single-cylinder diesel engine using these biodiesel combinations in order to check their feasibility as alternative fuels to diesel. Initially, experiments were conducted on each biodiesel and their blends with diesel and engine parameters were optimised in terms of injection pressure and injection timing. Advancing the injection timing improved the overall performance of the engine fuelled with JOME while retarding the injection timing favoured the HOME. Both biodiesels performed better with an injector opening pressure of 230 bar. Finally, experiments were conducted with the combination of both biodiesels with different blend ratios. It was observed that increasing the JOME content in the biodiesels blend improved the performance with reduced emissions of smoke, hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide emissions. However NO x emission increased.