Preparation and Performance Analysis of VCR Diesel Engine Fuelled with Ricebran Biodiesel along with Methanol Additive

Abstract

The continuous increase in the price of the diesel, gasoline fuel and the decrease in conventional petroleum fuel have turned us to look for the alternative fuels. Countries like India spent most of income on the petroleum and the diesel products. These petroleum products are going to extinct in some future years as per the study held by scientists. The diesel engines are mostly used in the world because of its better fuel economy and the effectiveness of cost .The alternative fuels such as vegetable oils can be used because they are environmental friendly and are accepted in the society. As the carbon contents are less the emissions will be decreased. For this we are using rice bran oil as the alternative fuel. These oils cannot be used directly in the diesel engine because of its high viscosity. As the engine cannot run with high viscosity fuels and damages are possible. The transesterification process is adopted to decrease the viscosity of the oil and hence the engine can run smoothly. The blends used are diesel and rice bran biodiesel mixture and methanol is added as a additive in smaller concentrations and testing is done by varying loads from no load to full load condition. Rice bran oil and the diesel are mixed and tested in a single cylinder four stroke diesel engine for various compression ratios and the performance results are compared to diesel by the results the performance of engine by using biodiesel with methanol gives slightly better performance than diesel.