Performance and Emission Characteristics of a Direct Injection Diesel Engine Using Biodiesel Produced From Waste Cooking Oil

The increasing vehicular population causing consumption of petroleum fuels at a faster rate and causes increase in the danger of petroleum fuels depletion and the remarkable increase in high crude oil prices. The increasing consumption of petroleum products has been a matter of great concern for the country for the financial growth as well as environmental pollution abatement. The situation offers us a challenge as well as opportunity to look for substitutes of fossil fuels by utilizing waste cooking oil for both economic and environmental benefits to the country. In the present experimental study, biodiesel produced from waste cooking oil (WCO) has been selected. It has been tested on single cylinder, four stroke, water cooled, direct injection diesel engine for the performance and emissions using fuel samples containing different blends of WCO biodiesel (0%, 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, 75% and 100%) and conventional diesel. Engine performance and exhaust emission characteristics have been measured and analyzed. The highest brake thermal efficiency has been found to be 27.67% and lowest brake specific fuel consumption of 0.305 kg/kw hr has been found with B20 blend. It is also found that emissions of carbon monoxide and un-burnt hydrocarbon reduce as load increases for all the blends of biodiesel tested on the engine up to 80% of maximum engine load ( i.e. 88.98 N or 20 lbs.) beyond that, these emissions further increase. It has been found that nitrogen oxides emission increases as the engine load increases on the engine up to 80% of maximum engine load beyond that it further decreases. This may be due to the presence of oxygen available in bio-fuel. Biodiesel prepared from waste cooking oil also reduces liquid waste. Hence biodiesel from waste cooking oil can be used as potential alternative fuel in future.