Experimental Investigation On Thermal Efficiency Of Diesel Engine With Jatropha-Diesel Blend With Biogas

Abstract

This work presents technical performance measurements of field biogas with pure jatropha oildiesel blends in a dual fuel diesel engine generator. Experimental tests of three performance parameters (thermal efficiency, volumetric efficiency and air excess ratio) were conducted by using biogas and jatropha oil - diesel blends (i.e. 5%, 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% and 50% jatropha oil/diesel). Accordingly, reference performance measurements of using diesel and the blends showed similar performance results in all the measured parameters. In the subsequent dual fuel operation, the thermal efficiency of all blends performs on an average of 31% at higher loads in similar result with the diesel (31.5%). The volumetric efficiency of J10 +Biogas is 92% among the blends which is comparable to that of the diesel and the other blends with biogas are in ranges of 80% at lower load and about 60% at higher loads, where the diesel has got 96% and 81% at lower and higher loads respectively. Air excess ratio of blends showed high reduction than the diesel: the highest ratio (4.37) is observed at lower load by using J10+Biogas and the lowest ratio (1) is resulted by J40+Biogas at higher load. The highest value for diesel is 6.17 at lower load and 1.8 at higher load.