Assessment of diesel engine combustion, performance and emission characteristics fuelled with dual fuel blends

Consumption of fossil fuels is an important issue which is to be addressed for better tomorrow due to its dreadful implications on the environment and its depleting nature is also a concern. Hence, the need of more diversified research in alternate sources arises, even to the point of complete elimination of diesel from compression ignition (CI) engines by using dual fuels; a mixture of high and low viscous fuel. In the present study, aamla seed oil biodiesel (AB) and eucalyptus oil (EU) blends were used as fuels for CI engine. Aamla seed oil was chemically modified with transesterification process. Results demonstrated that use of dual fuel can give satisfactory performance in a standard diesel engine without any tweaking in the engine. From all the tested fuel blends, result shows that a blend of 70% Aamla biodiesel- 30% Eucalyptus oil (AB70EU30) was found to be optimum blend and has potential to replace diesel completely. The performance and combustion characteristics of the engine fuelled with AB70EU30 were found almost in line with diesel. In addition, tailpipe emissions carbon monoxide (CO), unburnt hydrocarbon (HC) and smoke were found to be lower whereas nitrogen oxides emission was found to be almost equivalent with diesel.