Production of syngas from agricultural residue as a renewable fuel and its sustainable use in dual-fuel compression ignition engine to investigate performance, emission, and noise characteristics

In the present era, the world is in a difficult position as the prime problems, like continuous depletion of nonrenewable energy resources at a brisk rate and environment pollution due to emission of greenhouse gases which are released on burning fossil fuels, are worsening day by day. Due to this, the interest of the researchers is shifting toward the idea of alternative fuels derived from biomasses, which are renewable in nature and eco-friendly in contrast to the conventional fossil fuels, to reduce the dependence on exhausting nonrenewable energy sources. In the present study, agricultural residues like cotton stalks and wheat straws are processed in a downdraft gasifier to produce syngas through biomass gasification. The produced syngas is further inducted in a gasifier-coupled dual-fuel compression ignition (DFCI) engine to investigate the performance, emission, and noise characteristics of the dual fuel engine to compare the standard diesel operation and syngas-diesel dual fuel operation. The results during the investigation concluded that Dual Fuel Compression Ignition (DFCI) engine works satisfactorily in dual fuel mode of syngas-diesel. Moreover, a maximum 44.44% of reduction in diesel consumption is observed with a slight decrease in indicated power by 3.49% at the maximum loading condition. In addition to the reduction in diesel consumption, the emission of nitrogen oxide was reduced by maximum of 76.74% in dual fuel mode as compared to standard diesel operation.