Effects of injection timing and injection pressure on performance and exhaust emissions of a common rail diesel engine fueled by various concentrations of fish-oil biodiesel blends

Abstract

To evaluate the performance and emissions of a test engine fueled by biodiesel blends produced from fish processing by-products, the experimental and simulation methods were used to investigate the effects of injection pressure and timing on engine operation and correlation of these effects with varying fish-oil concentrations in the biodiesel blends. Consequently, commercial diesel fuel blended with different concentrations of fish-oil biodiesel including B0, B10, B20, B30, B40 and B50 (corresponding to 0%, 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, and 50% of biodiesel in blend) were used for the test engine. Compared to B0, the average reduction in brake power of the biodiesel fuels was reduced proportionally with the biodiesel ratio in the fuel blends. The brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC) and NOx emissions increased together with a reduction in soot, HC and CO emissions as the percentage of biodiesel increases. Moreover, the engine characteristics depend on operating parameters such as injection timing and injection pressure as also mentioned in many previous studies. When increasing injection timing, the brake power initially increases until reaching a maximum value and then decreases slightly for all types of fuels tested. Meanwhile, the effect of injection pressure differs depending on the pressure range and biodiesel blends.