EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION ON THE PERFORMANCE AND EMISSION CHARACTERISTICS OF A DIESEL ENGINE FUELLED WITH ETHANOL, DIESEL AND JATROPHA BASED BIODIESEL BLENDS

Increasingly stringent emissions regulations and environmental concerns have caused interest in the development of alternative fuels for internal combustion engines. Recently biobutanol, bioethanol and biodiesel emerged as an alternative fuels due to their oxygenated nature. This paper investigates the physical stability of ethanol-diesel blends using Jatropha oil methyl esters and enerdiesel emulsifier as additives, subsequently analysis of physico-chemical properties. Furthermore, experimental tests were carried out to study the performance (fuel consumption, thermal efficiency, exhaust gas temperature) and emissions (CO, NOx, HC and smoke) of Direct Injection (DI) engine fuelled with the various blends compared with those fuelled by diesel. The blends used for this study were B0D95E5, B0D90E10, B15D70E15 and B20D60E20. It is revealed from the observations that the test fuel blends are physically and thermally stable upto 17 days at room temperature. The physico-chemical properties of the all blends show good resemblance with that of diesel except the flash point. The performance results show that B0D95E5 fuel blend has maximum brake thermal efficiency and minimum Brake Specific Fuel Consumption (bsfc) at higher loads. Similarly, the overall emission characteristics are found to be best for the case of B0D90E10 over the entire range of engine operations