Performance and Emission of Single Cylinder Four-Stroke Diesel Engine Using Waste Animal Fat

Wasif Nisar , Dr. Manish Gupta, Dr. Sachin Saini

Synthesis of biodiesel from waste animal fat was the first step in this research. Biodiesel was made using a traditional chemical process called transesterification. In transesterification process pure fat was reacted with methanol in presence of KOH as catalyst. For every 100 ml of pure liquid fat 1 gram of KOH with 20ml of methanol was used for reaction at around 60^oc temperature. Following the production of biodiesel, blends of biodiesel and neat diesel in various mixing ratios, such as AFME5 (95 % D+5 % BD), AFME10 (90 % D+10 % BD), and AFME20 (80 % D+20 % BD) were prepared for carrying out the performance and emission tests on four-stroke single-cylinder diesel engine. The primary physico-chemical properties such as Calorific value, density, kinematic viscosity and CFPP of fat-based biodiesel and its blends were determined prior to testing. All of the properties measured were found to be in agreement with ASTM requirements.

The four-stroke diesel engine was run on different fuels and its performance and emission characteristics have been tested at all the modes of operation. The thesis includes a full discussion and analysis of engine data and performance factors. The brake thermal efficiency (BTE) of AFME10 was the maximum among all the test fuels, with value of 29.85% at full load capacity of test rig. Brake specific energy consumption of all the blended fuels was found to be more than that of pure diesel fuel. However, among the blends AFME5 has lowest BSEC values, with value of 12.50KJ/KW-hr at full load capacity. Because of the large amount of oxygen available in AFME20, exhaust emissions such as CO, HC, and smoke were lowest for this mix, the values of these emissions for AFME20 came out to be 0.4% of carbon monoxide, 75ppm of unburnt hydrocarbons and 63% of smoke opacity. As a result of the oxygenated environment, NO_X emissions were greater in blended fuels, 20% mix has maximum NO_X emissions. NO_X emissions value of AFME20 comes out to be 2560ppm at full load capacity. During the trials, smooth engine operation was noted. As a result, it has been discovered that the test fuels up to 20% mixing can be used as a cleaner fuel in any diesel engine without modification.