Performance evaluation of CI engine using diesel, diesel-biodiesel blends and diesel-kerosene blends through exergy analysis

Abstract

Conventional fuels like diesel and petroleum have been the main sources of energy for several years. The increasing demand for energy has put pressure on the usage of these fuels, resulting in much higher depletion rates over the last few years rendering the search for alternative sources of energy as the utmost priority. Attempts are being made to find suitable fuel which when blended with these commercial fuels offers same or improved engine performance and efficiency with fewer losses. Biodiesel is among those alternatives. In this paper, exergy analysis of a single cylinder diesel engine, which is water-cooled, having a rating of 5HP has been done. Biodiesel and kerosene have been blended with pure diesel and a comparative exergy analysis is done between pure diesel and all the blends. Dead state analysis has been performed for B20 (20% biodiesel and 80% diesel by volume) and K40 (40% kerosene and 60% diesel by volume). Exergy of exhaust gases decreased slightly on increasing load for all the blends and pure diesel except for K30, for which it is observed to be maximum at 20% load. Second law efficiency is increasing with an increase in applied load for all the diesel-biodiesel and diesel-kerosene blends. Dead state temperature is varied from 273K to 323K, exhaust availability decreased by 218.948 kJ for B20 and by 450.489 kJ for K40.The irreversibility increased by 218.948 kJ for B20 and by 1410.712 kJ for K40 when the energy at exhaust is kept constant. However, in actual analysis energy in exhaust changes with dead state temperature, in this case, the irreversibility decreased by 920.302 kJ for B20 and by 1690.203 kJ for K40.