Impact of injection pressure on a dual-fuel engine using acetylene gas and microalgae blends of chlorella protothecoides

Abstract

The amount of fossil fuel usage in compression ignition (CI) engines is greatly reduced when biodiesel is used. The primary disadvantage of using biodiesel is that, due to its high viscosity, which causes fuels to remain unburned during the premixed combustion stage, leads to lower brake thermal efficiency (BTE). Gaseous fuels predominantly reducing emissions in CI engines due to its complete burning without leaving any carbon traces. Fuel injection pressure (FIP) is one of the factors which is influencing the combustion phase because they are used to optimize fuel particle atomization. The current study examines engine parameters for a dual fuel engine that runs on biodiesel blends made from 20 % methyl ester of chlorella protothecoides micro algae (B20MEOA) and acetylene gas under variable Fuel injection pressure (FIP) ranging from 200 bar to 240 bar with 10-bar steps. According to the experimental results, when 3 LPM of acetylene gas is supplied along with the intake air and B20MEOA supplied at a FIP of 240 bar, the emissions such as smoke opacity, hydrocarbon (HC), and carbon monoxide (CO) are reduced by 16.9 %, 8.3 %, and 15.4 %, respectively, whereas the oxides of nitrogen (NOx) increases by approximately 7 % when compared to B20MEOA alone operation.