Development of a gasifier for fueling of a diesel engine

Diesel engines are highly preferred for transportation since they are highly efficient and durable in the long run. However, because of lack of crude oil reserves, fuel cost and emission norms, alternative fuels are of high interest to replace the diesel fuel in diesel engines. Many alternative liquid fuels for diesel engines such as bio-diesel, alcohol have been introduced in the recent past. These are obtained from biomass. Gaseous fuels are better than liquid fuels. Therefore, in this project a gasifier was designed and fabricated to get producer gas. The design of the entire gasifier along with the details of every part is provided. The method of fabricating each part is also detailed. The feedstock or raw material used for gasification in this project is chips of wood which is a biomass available in large quantity. The diesel engine was run with diesel as the main fuel and the producer gas obtained from biomass was sent along with air. The performance and combustion characteristics of the engine were studied. A reduction in the consumption of diesel fuel was observed as the brake specific energy consumption was found to decrease when both diesel and producer gas were used. Also, a marginal increase in thermal efficiency was noted with the use of producer gas along with diesel as the fuel