Abstract:

Energy crisis and scarcity of conventional energy sources have led to various alterations in the fuels used for transport and power sectors, especially the gap between demand and supply of petroleum products like petrol, diesel etc. has grown by large scales in the past decade or two.
Hence the main objective of present day’s fuel is either completely alternating the available scarce fuels or by blending the available ones keeping in mind 2 vital points of not compromising on the performance factors like efficiency, output etc. and its affects on the environment. This led to the evolution of biofuels.
This paper analyzes the performance of a variable compression diesel engine by fueling it with 3 different kinds of fuels (mix of soybean oil and diesel, blend of soybean oil methyl ester & diesel and diesel alone). Methyl ester is obtained by transesterification process which is discussed in detail in the paper.
We determine various performance factors like b.s.f.c., brake thermal efficiency, heat release rate analysis (cumulative and net) etc. at 3 different compression ratios for each of the 3 fuels used.
Other aspects like characteristics of the fuels used, analysis of the above experiment and specifications of the diesel engine will be addressed in the paper.