Performance and emission characteristics of diesel engine fuelled with cashew nut shell oil & optimizing the operating parameters using response surface methodology

Abstract

Due to the stringent environmental changes and rosein pollution from automobiles and other industrial sources make researchers to find an alternative fuel for diesel substitute based engines. In this paper, direct injection CI engine characteristics is studied using cashew nut shell oil as a biodiesel. The work carried out in two parts, the first part consist of experimental work studies on 4 stroke single cylinder CRDI engine using CNSL as a biodiesel. CNSL Biodiesel is prepared by acid-base trans-esterification technique. The prepared biodiesel is then blended with diesel by the volume basis of [B20D80]. The Diesel engine operated at constant speed of 1500 rpm for the loading condition such as 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%. The brake thermal efficiency, brake specific fuel consumption, injection pressure, blend percentage were noted. In terms of Emissions, the CO, CO2, NOX, HC were observed for all loading conditions and compression ratios. The second part of the work is to optimize the operating parameters of the diesel engine using response surface methodology optimizer. For the optimization the input values namely engine load, compression ratio, bending ratios of diesel and biodiesel is varied accordingly to observe the output parameters like BTE, BSFC and for emissions like CO, CO2, NOx, and HC. The optimization is carried out using statistical Minitab software version 18. The predicted and experimental values were compared for the optimal values of BTE, BSFC and emissions respectively.