Effect of Preheating the Cotton Seed Biodiesel (BCO) on the Performance of Diesel Engine

Abstract

The compression ignition (CI) engines are robust and deliver better performance in terms of fuel economy. Fuels that replace the fossil diesel and those result in lower emissions is the research area on which scientist community working on continuously. Locally available cotton seed biodiesel (BCO) was selected for its feasibility check as CI engine fuel and found a better option in replacing the diesel by 100%. In the first part, the study finds best fuel injection timing (IT) and injector opening pressure (IOP) for the biodiesel to give higher brake thermal efficiency (BTE). It is reported that BCO yielded best BTE at IT of 19o before top dead centre (bTDC) and IOP of 240 bar. In the second part, the effect of heating BCO by utilizing the waste heat of burnt gas on the performance of CI engine was studied keeping best BTE operating conditions. The study revealed that results of heating BCO to about 80 to 90 oC, use of injector of six holes with hole size of 0.2 mm and toriodal reentrant combustion chamber (TRCC) were similar to standard diesel fuel CI mode results.