Performance and emissions characteristics of Jatropha oil (preheated and blends) in a direct injection compression ignition engine

The scarce and rapidly depleting conventional petroleum resources have promoted research for alternative fuels for internal combustion engines. Among various possible options, fuels derived from triglycerides (vegetable oils/animal fats) present promising “greener” substitutes for fossil fuels. Vegetable oils, due to their agricultural origin, are able to reduce net CO2 emissions to the atmosphere along with import substitution of petroleum products. However, several operational and durability problems of using straight vegetable oils in diesel engines reported in the literature, which are because of their higher viscosity and low volatility compared to mineral diesel fuel.In the present research, experiments were designed to study the effect of reducing Jatropha oil’s viscosity by increasing the fuel temperature (using waste heat of the exhaust gases) and thereby eliminating its effect on combustion and emission characteristics of the engine. Experiments were also conducted using various blends of Jatropha oil with mineral diesel to study the effect of reduced blend viscosity on emissions and performance of diesel engine. A single cylinder, four stroke, constant speed, water cooled, direct injection diesel engine typically used in agricultural sector was used for the experiments. The acquired data were analyzed for various parameters such as thermal efficiency, brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC), smoke opacity, CO2, CO and HC emissions. While operating the engine on Jatropha oil (preheated and blends), performance and emission parameters were found to be very close to mineral diesel for lower blend concentrations. However, for higher blend concentrations, performance and emissions were observed to be marginally inferior.