Performance Study of Preheated Degummed Jatropha oil on Agricultural Diesel Engine

Anil Kumar Dubey¹, R. M Sarviya² and A. Rehman²

¹Division of Agricultural Energy and Power, Central Institute of Agricultural Engineering, Bhopal - 462 038 India.

²Department of Mechanical Engineering, Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, Bhopal - 462 051 India.

ABSTRACT: A study was conducted on the use of degummed jatropha oil (DGJO) as an alternate fuel for medium speed CI engines used in agricultural sector. The viscosity of jatropha oil was reduced to certain extent by degumming process as well as by pre heating the test fuel. The fuel prepared by blending DGJO in fossil diesel was preheated just before the injector using engine exhaust gas waste heat up to 70 °C. The pre heating of fuel inlet has shown improvement in engine performance. The brake specific fuel consumption and brake thermal efficiency were improved by 13.3% and 10.6% respectively when compared with the performance observed with unheated DGJO based test fuel. The engine was successfully operated with pre heated (70 °C) DGJO100 at 20.9% of maximum brake thermal efficiency. The maximum brake thermal efficiency with fossil diesel was observed to be 24.4%.

KEYWORDS: Pre heated degummed jatropha oil; diesel fuel; CI engine; fuel inlet temperature; fuel property

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