Development of a Novel Process to produce Biodiesel and its use as fuel in CI Engine performance study and exhaust analysis

Abstract

A novel process has successfully been developed by overcoming major difficulties through the elimination of number of process steps involved in the Classical Transesterification reaction during the preparation of Fatty Acid Methyl/Ethyl Ester (FAME.FAEE) called biodiesel. The Classical process with cost intensive process steps such as the utilization of excess alcohol, needing downstream distillation for the recovery and reutilization of excess alcohol/cosolvent, unrecoverable homogenous catalyst which consumes vast quantity of fresh distilled water during the purification of the product and downstream waste water treatment before its safe disposal to the surface water body. The Novel Process FAME/FAEE is produced from any vegetable oil irrespective of edible or inedible variety using sonication energy. The novelty of the finding is the use of only theoretical quantity of alcohol along with a co-solvent and reduced quantity of homogeneous catalyst. Under this condition neither the homogeneous catalyst goes to the FAME layer nor is the distillation needed. The same ester also has been prepared in high pressure high temperature reactor without using catalyst at sub critical temperature. The quality of prepared biodiesel without involving any purification step meets the ASTM standards. Blended Biodiesel with Common Diesel Fuel (CDF) and FAME is prepared, characterized and used as fuel in the Kirloskar make CI Engines. The evaluation of the engine performance result of pure CDF, B05 biodiesel, B10 biodiesel of all types of biodiesel prepared by using the feedstock of Soybean (Glycine max) and Karanja (Pongamia pinnate) oil along with their mixed oil provides useful information such as brake power, brake thermal efficiency, brake specific fuel consumption, etc, and established it as ideal fuel for unmodified CI engine. Keyword: Novel Process, Transesterification, Sonication, High Pressure Reactor