Author : Amit Pal

There is tremendous increase in transportation activities in recent times. Petroleum fuels are the key energy source in India and preferred as automotive fuel. Their use has been increasing continuously from 3.5 MMT (Million Metric Tons) in the year 1950-51 to 84.3 MMT in 1997-98 and about 113 MMT in 2001 and it were about 148 MMT in 2011-12. Petroleum based fuels are obtained from limited reserves which are highly intense in certain regions of the world. Therefore, those countries that do not have these resources and facing a foreign exchange crisis are looking for alternative fuels, which can be produced from materials available inside the country. Biodiesel is considered as clean fuel since it has almost no sulphur, no aromatics and has about 10 % built in oxygen, which helps it to burn fully. In present paper the engine performance and exhaust emissions of jatropha oil biodiesel blends, were investigated on a 39 kW multi cylinder engine, in B10 to B30 percent blends and compared with the petroleum diesel fuel. The experimental results show that the engine power and torque of the mixture of oil–diesel fuel are close to the values obtained from diesel fuel and the amounts of smoke, CO and HC exhaust emissions are lower than those of diesel fuel, except slight increase of NOx emissions at higher loads.

Keywords: Diesel Engine, Performance testing, Emissions, Smoke, jatropha, biodiesel

Article published in International Journal of Current  Engineering  and Technology, Vol.3,No.5(Dec- 2013)