Performance and emission studies on an agriculture engine on neat Jatropha oil

Abstract

Diesel engines have proven their utility in the transportation, agriculture, and power sectors in India. They are also potential sources of decentralized energy generation for rural electrification. Concerns on the long-term availability of petroleum diesel and the stringent environmental norms have mandated the search for a renewable alternative to diesel fuel to address these problems. Vegetable oils have been considered good alternatives to diesel in the past couple of years. However, there are many issues related to the use of vegetable oils in diesel engine. Jatropha curcas has been promoted in India as a sustainable substitute to diesel fuel. This study aims to develop a dual fuel engine test rig for evaluating the potential suitability of Jatropha oil as diesel fuel and for determining the performance and emission characteristics of an engine with Jatropha oil. The experimental results suggest that engine performance using Jatropha oil is slightly inferior to that of diesel fuel. The thermal efficiency of the engine was lower, while the brake-specific fuel consumption was higher with Jatropha oil compared with diesel fuel. The levels of nitrogen oxides (NOx) from Jatropha oil during the entire duration of the experiment were lower than those of diesel fuel. The reduction of NOx was found to be an important characteristic of Jatropha oil as NOx emission is the most harmful gaseous emission from engines; as such, its reduction is always the goal of engine researchers and makers. During the entire experiment, carbon monoxide (CO), hydrocarbon (HC), and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the case of using Jatropha oil were higher than when diesel fuel was used. The higher density and viscosity of Jatropha oil causes lower thermal efficiency and higher brakespecific fuel consumption. The performance and emission characteristics found in this study are significant for the study of replacing diesel fuel from fossils with Jatropha oil in rural India, where the availability of diesel has always been a problem.