Experimental and Theoretical Investigations on Combustion Performance and Emissions of Diesel Engine Fueled with Diesel Biodiesel Blends

Abstract

ABSTRACT newlineAs the diesel oil price keep changing and its reserves keep decreasing, the use of diesel oil newlinefor transportation and or industries should be minimized and replaced as much as possible by newlinean alternative biofuel. On the other hand increasingly tough emissions regulations declared newlineby different nations coupled with fast-depleting crude oil resources have caused a stimulation newlineof interest in finding alternative fuels for petroleum-based fuels like diesel and gasoline in newlineorder to keep the automotive industry alive. Biodiesel was found as the best alternate fuel, newlinetechnically and environmentally acceptable, economically competitive and easily available. It newlinehas received much attention in the past decade due to its ability to replace fossil fuels, which newlineare likely to run out within a century. newlineThe aim of the present study is to analyze the combustion characteristics, performance and newlineemission parameters of a variable compression ratio newline(VCR newline)diesel engine using soybean newlinemethyl ester newline(SME newline)biodiesel. The selection of soybean biodiesel is based on an extensive newlinereview of literature which indicated that this is a relatively unexplored fuel on variable newlinecompression ratio diesel engine. Initially the engine is fueled with diesel fuel to generate the newlinebase line data, and then SME was tested as 20 % blend newline(B20 newline), as 40% blend newline(B40 newline) and as newlinepure bio-fuel newline(B100 newline) on volume basis. The experimental investigation is followed by a newlinecomputational study by using the simulation software Diesel-RK consisting of full newlineinvestigation on combustion, performance, emissions parameters of a single cylinder four newlinestroke VCR diesel engine fueled with SME blends with diesel fuel and optimization strategy newlinetechniques for predicting the optimum reduction in the exhaust emissions and controlling the newlinebiodiesel NOx effect without sacrificing operating performance. Computational combustion newlineand emissions analysis of diesel engine is done by using the CFD software newline(ANSYS FLUENT 13 newline). The combustion chamber model was drawn using GAMBIT and the newlinemeshing of the