Author : Akash K. Ingole, Achuat S. Deo, Ajay K. Ledade, Kunal R. Dhote and Amol D. Pitale

Today’s modern world is facing significant amount of energy crisis regarding conventional fuel. Biodiesel is becoming prominent among the alternatives to conventional petro-diesel due to economic, environmental and social factors. In this study, biodiesel has been produced from Soyabean and Karanj oil by transesterification process. The oil yield of Soyabean and Karanj seed and the biodiesel output of the oil were studied in order to know the productivity of the oil. The physico-chemical properties of the biodiesel like specific gravity, density, flash point, kinematic viscosity (40ºC) etc. were evaluated and compared with that of fossil, diesel. The results show minimal difference between physico-chemical properties of biodiesel and conventional diesel. This reveals that biodiesel blends can be used as an alternative to conventional diesel. In these blends, two samples were used; each having 10% and 20% respectively by volume and the remaining portion was diesel. After the experimentation on the specified diesel engine with prepared blends, EGT, BSFC and BTE for each of the fuel blends are calculated at different loads and compared with diesel fuels. The study further investigates the smoke emission at different loads for all the prepared blends of biodiesel and diesel. For simplification of calculations RPM of engine was kept constant. This shows the performance of the C.I. Engine using biodiesel & diesel in different approaches & the use of glycerol which is the by-product of transesterification process is also discussed.

Keywords: Biodiesel, alternative fuel, transesterification, physico-chemical properties, blends