PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT OF A DI DIESEL ENGINE USING COTTONSEED OIL

ABSTRACT
Diesel engines are the prime movers for heavy-duty vehicles used in transportation and agricultural sectors. Diesel engines meet their energy requirement from stored fuels i.e. petroleum products. The twin problems of both depletion in scarce resources and atmospheric pollution caused by vehicles running on petro products are perturbing the researchers to find available and immediate alternative to fossil fuels.

The physical and combustion properties of vegetable oils are close to petro-diesel fuel and in this context, vegetable oils can stand as an immediate candidate substitute for stored fuels. Vegetable oils are produced from processing of seeds of various plants and thus Renewable in nature.

However due to inherent high viscosity and low volatility vegetable oils would pose problems such as fuel flow and poor atomization and constraining their direct use in engines without any modifications.

In the present investigation effect of supercharging is studied on the performance of a direct injection diesel engine with the use of untreated cottonseed oil.

Performance of the engine is evaluated in terms of break specific fuel consumption, exhaust Gas Temperature and smoke Density. It is observed that when cottonseed oil is used as a fuel, there is a reduction in BSFC of about 15% when the engine is run at the recommended injection pressure and supercharging pressure of 0.4 bar g in comparison with the engine operation run under naturally operated condition.
The investigation revealed that cotton seed oil, in general vegetable oils, can best be utilized if supercharging is employed at the recommended injection pressure of the engine.