Experimental Investigation of Performance Characteristics of Diesel Engine using Diesel-Neem Blends with Pentanol

Abstract

The present research work endeavour aims to examine the performance characteristics of a diesel engine which uses neem methyl ester biodiesel with pentanol additive. There is an imperative to find an alternative fuel for transportation and power generation due to the depletion of petroleum and global warming. In this work, at various proportions, neem seed oil-diesel blends are used with pentanol as an additive (N100, N90 and N80) to increase the burning performance of the fuel. The performance characteristics of the engine through BP (brake power), SFC (specific fuel consumption), efficiency and exhaust temperature at various load conditions were determined. The eddy current dynamometer was used as the loading device in the engine test setup. The engine’s performance and combustion attributes across various loading conditions were compared and examined with the outcomes of pure diesel. It had been found that the brake power increased proportionally with the load and had an identical trend in its variation among various fuels. The SFC was observed to reduce with the increase in the applied load. However, the efficiency of the engine increased linearly up to 5 kg of load. After that, the efficiency stabilized beyond the 15 kg load. The maximum efficiency was obtained with N90 fuel containing 10% pentanol. It was concluded that the addition of pentanol improved the performance. However, too much of the additive resulted in a decrease in the engine efficiency.