Multi-Objective Optimization of Biodiesel and Diethyl Ether Doped Diesel Engine by Taguchi Method

Abstract

In present study, it was targeted to optimize multiple impacts of palm oil ratio, diethyl ether (DEE) percentage and engine load on the performance and emissions of a single cylinder diesel engine. The experiments were de-signed on the basis of the Taguchi L27 orthogonal array, which accepts palm oil percentage, DEE ratio and load as variables, brake thermal efficiency (BTE), brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC), nitrogen oxide (NOx) emis-sion and smoke emission as responses. The impacts of engine running factors on responses were defined by analysis of variance (ANOVA). S / N ratio and interactions plots were created for each answer to show optimum factor lev-els. The results showed that the most effective parameters in general on all engine outputs are the load and DEE ratio. In addition, considering the find-ings obtained, the best working variables of the engine were determined as 5% DEE percentage, 6% palm oil percentage, and 850-Watt load. The best BTE, BSFC, NOx and smoke emission obtained according to optimum work-ing parameters were found as 30.73%, 824.59 g/kWh, 292.20 ppm and 68.91%, respectively. Mean errors between experimental and optimized re-sults were found as 0.46%, 1.75%, 3.72% and 0.16% for BTE, BSFC, NOx and smoke emission, respectively. These results showed that the Taguchi de-sign method can be used as an effective tool to determine the impact rates of engine operating parameters and to optimize operating parameters, engine performance and emissions based on the determined impact rates.