Performance and emission characteristics of diesel engine with hemp biodiesel blends

Abstract

The increased population in the world has resulted in excessive use of conventional fossil fuel resources especially petroleum diesel over the world wide which in turn made every nation to find out the possible alternate energy sources for replacement of petroleum diesel. This article investigates the suitability of hemp biodiesel blends generated from hemp vegetable oil can be used as a fuel a single-cylinder, four-stroke diesel engine. The conventional transesterification procedure is used to transform hemp vegetable oil to hemp biodiesel. The fuel qualities of biodiesel and its blends have been analyzed and determined to be equivalent to those of petroleum diesel, in accordance with the criteria set by ASTM. The purpose of this work was to examine the performance and emission characteristics of a diesel engine employing hemp biodiesel blends and compare them with those corresponding to conventional diesel fuel which was employed as a reference fuel. The results showed that as the load on the diesel engine increased, the brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC) decreases, however the brake thermal efficacy (BTE) as well as exhaust gas temperatures (EGT) increased for the blends of hemp biodiesel. In the emission test, as load increases, there is an increase in the emissions of CO2, UBHC and NOX but decreases in CO. Additionally, the emission of smoke exhibits an inverse relationship with load, increasing at lower loads as well as decreasing at higher loads. Hemp biodiesel blends provide diesel engine efficiency and emission characteristics that are comparable to those produced by diesel engine utilizing standard diesel fuel.