Emission investigation on the effect of ultrasonic irradiation in neat biodiesel fuelled engine

Abstract

In this study, the effects of Ultrasonic Irradiation (UI) on transesterification of mango seed oil (MSO) and it’s the engine emissions patterns were examined. MSO is converted into biodiesel by two techniques, namely conventional transesterification and transesterification by using ultrasonic irradiation. Transesterification using both the process employed the same proportion of alcohols, catalyst and oil. However, the heating process is replaced by ultrasound irradiation. Biodiesel derived from the conventional technique is referred to as MSBD, whereas. Biodiesel derived from ultrasonic Irradiation is referred to as MSBDUI. Transesterification results revealed that the modified fuel (MSBDUI) involved 3 min for 89.8% conversion, whereas convention heating (MSBD) involved 75 min for 78.4% conversion. Emissions experiments were conducted on a single-cylinder, four-stroke, water-cooled, diesel engine using MSBD and MSBDUI at the same circumstances. Experimental results show that the MSBDUI have slightly and lesser CO (0.3–0.5%), NO (1.7–1.9%), HC emissions (0.5–0.8%) and Smoke emissions (1.2–1.7%) when compared to neat MSBD at all testing conditions due to its improved properties.