BIODIESEL PRODUCTION OF WCO BY HYDRODYNAMIC CAVITATION AND ITS PERFORMANCE TESTING ON A CI ENGINE

Abstract

Rapid depletion in petroleum reserves, and increasing cost of fuels and increasing pollution in the environment due to these fossil fuels have stimulated the search for the alternatives to petroleum based fuels. Biomass derived vegetable oils are quite promising alternative fuels for agriculture and transport diesel engines. Different type of vegetable oils like jatropha oil, waste cooking oil, linseed oil, sunflower oil, coconut oil, karanja oil etc. can be converted into biodiesel to be used as a bio-fuel. Only problem with Waste Cooking Oil is its high viscosity and low volatility. To overcome these problems esterification is done. Transesterification is the process in which Vegetable oil is treated with ethyl/methyl alcohol in presence of as a catalyst. In this experimental investigation we have prepared the biodiesel from waste cooking oil by conventional and advanced methods (e.g. mechanical stirring method, ultrasonic cavitation method and hydrodynamic cavitation methods) and studied the effect of different parameters like reaction time, change in catalyst percentage and change in molar ratio on the yield of biodiesel produced. Max yield is obtained for catalyst-0.5% and molar ratio 6:1 for 60 min reaction time. Yield obtain is higher for Hydrodynamic Cavitation than Ultrasonic Cavitation and conventional Mechanical Stirring method. Further experimental work is conducted on a single cylinder four-stroke watercooled direct injection, constant speed diesel engine that was operated on different blends of waste cooking oil based bio-diesel and diesel. Load on the engine was varied to study their influence on performance, emission and combustion. It is observed that with increase in biodiesel in the blend brake thermal efficiency increases and a decrease in CO and hydrocarbon (HC) and smoke emission is also observed.