Utilisation of Heat Energy from the Exhaust Gases and Performance Analysis of a Diesel Engine, with Used Sunflower Oil-Diesel Blends

The vegetable oils stands as an alternate fuels as physical and combustion properties are dose to the diesel fuel, However the viscosity of the vegetable oils is higher than the diesel. In the present work waste sunflower oil is taken as an alternate fuel. The high viscosity of sunflower oil is decreased by blending with diesel in various proportions and heated prior to the combustion in the cylinder. The fuel blends are heated by means of the exhaust gases of the engine. The blends of varying proportions of sunflower oil and diesel are prepared, analyzed compared with diesel. The effect of temperature on viscosity of the fuel blends is also studied. The performance of the engine using fuel blends is evaluated in a single cylinder C.I engine and compared with the performance obtained with the pure diesel. The experiments are performed on the 4-stroke engine at various loads by maintaining constant speed.
The performance parameters of the blends like brake specific fuel consumption, thermal efficiencies is observed very nearer values to the pure diesel values. The fuel consumption, thermal efficiencies are observed very nearer values to the pure diesel values. The fuel consumption and exhaust gas temperature are increased slightly for the fuel blends compared to pure diesel. The fuel blends supplied to the engine are S10 (10% sunflower oil and 90% diesel), 325 and 350, 360. It is observed that the performance of the engine is almost same up to 325 fuel blend without much heating, compared to pure diesel. The maximum brake thermal efficiency obtained is 30.3% for S25 blend while it is 32.6% for pure diesel. The bsfc and maximum exhaust gas temperature obtained are 0.262 kg/hvh and 292°C respectively for S25 fluid blend, while they are 0.248 kg/kwh and 242°C for pure diesel. Acceptable thermal efficiency and bsfc are also obtained for S50 fuel blend.