Effect of wet ethanol on performance and smoke emission of direct injection diesel engine with cold egr system fueled by diesel fuel and jatropha oil

Diesel engines are widely used as a mode of transportation because of better performance and higher efficiency than gasoline engines. A large number of uses of diesel engines has resulted in increased consumption of fossil fuels and air pollution. Therefore, this study aims to find alternative fuels to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, and the impact of alternative fuels on the environment with the Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) system. The use of jatropha oil as an alternative fuel and wet ethanol as an additive is one of the solutions to be the focus of current work. In this experiment, the primary fuel, namely diesel fuel, is mixed with 10% to 30% jatropha oil with wet ethanol variations between 5% and 15%. The study results inform that the use of jatropha oil and wet ethanol as additives in cold EGR improves engine performance. From the experimental results, it was found that the torque and brake power are increased by 13.6% with the J10WE10 fuel in the hot EGR system. The highest increase in brake thermal efficiency (BTE) is 9.21% with J10WE15 fuel in the hot EGR system. While the lowest decrease in the value of brake thermal efficiency (BTE) is 2.13% with J10 fuel in the cold EGR system. The opacity increased by 31.03% with the J10WE15 fuel in the cold EGR system at low engine loads, and the lowest reduction in opacity was 2.17% in the hot EGR system at full engine load. Keywords – Wet ethanol, EGR, Jatropha oil, Opacit