Honge oil methyl ester and producer gas-fuelled dual-fuel engine operated with varying compression ratios

Abstract

Alternative and renewable fuels have numerous advantages compared with fossil fuels as they are renewable and biodegradable, besides providing food and energy security and foreign exchange savings and addressing environmental and socio-economic issues. Therefore, these renewable fuels can be used predominantly in compression ignition (CI) engines for transportation purposes and power generation applications. Today, the use of biomass-derived producer gas is more relevant for addressing rural power generation and is also a promising technique for controlling both NO x and soot emission levels. Although a producer gas–biodiesel-operated dual-fuel diesel engine exhibits lower performance, they are independent from the use of fossil fuels. The lower performance of the engine could be due to the slow-burning and lower calorific value of producer gas. For this purpose, exhaustive experiments on the use of Honge oil methyl ester (HOME)–producer gas in a dual-fuel CI engine were carried out for the improvement of its fuel efficiency. This paper presents the effect of the compression ratio (CR) on the performance, combustion and exhaust emission characteristics of a single-cylinder, four-stroke, direct injection stationary diesel engine operated using HOME and producer gas in a dual-fuel mode. The results indicated that the HOME–producer gas combination exhibited lower brake thermal efficiency (BTE) with comparable emission levels with the diesel–producer gas combination at different CRs. Comparative measures of BTE, peak pressure, pressure–crank angle variation, heat release rate, smoke opacity, and hydrocarbon (HC), carbon monoxide (CO) and nitric oxide (NO x ) emission levels are presented and analysed.