Utilization of Biomass based Fuel in a Naturally Aspirated Diesel Engine

Depletion of petroleum reserves as well as concern over emission problems has now compelled us to widen our search for alternative fuels for heat and power applications. Solid fuels such as wood, charcoal, palm shell and coal are being tested extensively. In liquid fuels, methanol, ethanol and even vegetable oils have been successfully used after alcoholysis. There has been renewed interest in the use of vegetable oils for making biodiesel due to its less polluting and renewable nature as against the conventional petroleum diesel fuel. Various researches are being made to make emulsions with wood pyrolysis oil (WPO) with diesel to overcome the miscibility problem. However, in this issue, an attempt has been made to replace a certain percentage of Jatropha methyl ester (JME) with WPO, it can improve the economic prospects of biodiesel. In this investigation, performance and emission characteristics of a diesel engine fueled with JME-WPO emulsions were studied and those results were compared with baseline diesel and presented in this paper.