Preparation and Performance Study of Cottonseed Biodiesel Fuelled in Greaves 4-Stroke Single Cylinder Diesel Engine

Three major crisis faced by the world are depletion of fossil fuels, environmental degradation and unavailability of electricity. Thus depleting fossil fuels made the world to think about the alternate fuels. Biodiesel is an alternative fuel for diesel engines that is receiving great attention worldwide. In this investigation, cottonseed oil has been considered as a potential alternate fuel for diesel engines and has been chosen to find out its suitability for use as fuel. Hence, we developed cottonseed oil as an alternate fuel by formulating its properties closer to the conventional diesel oil so that it can be used in the diesel engine without any hardwired modification. The main objective of the present study was to decrease the viscosity of cottonseed oil by trans-esterification process, in the fabricated esterification plant and then blend it with diesel, to evaluate the fuel properties of the trans-esterterified oil (or processed oil) and to study the engine performance of processed oil. The fuel consumption and efficiency was estimated for B5, B10, B15, B20, B40, B100 blends of cottonseed oil and compared with diesel. Trans-esterified cottonseed oil methyl esters behaves like diesel and also works well if B100 is pre-heated and maintained for about 600˚C using a heating element with controller in the fuel tank . The smoke levels of B100 are also considerably lesser than that of diesel.