Experimental and Computational Investigations for Combustion, Performance and Emission Parameters of a Diesel Engine Fueled with Soybean Biodiesel-Diesel Blends

In this work experimental and theoretical investigations were carried out on a single cylinder, direct injection diesel engine operating on different blends of a soybean methyl ester (SME) with diesel fuel. The effect of blending on the cylinder pressure, heat release rate, carbon monoxide (CO), unburned hydrocarbon (UHC), nitrogen oxides (NOx), and smoke opacity were measured. The results indicate that the use of biodiesel produces lower smoke opacity up to 48.23% with 14.65% higher brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC) compared to diesel fuel. The measured CO emissions of B20% SME and B100% SME were found to be 11.36% and 41.7% lower than that of diesel fuel respectively. All blends of SME were found to emit significantly lower UHC concentration compared to that of diesel over the entire load. NOx emissions are observed to be higher for all blends of SME. The experimental results are compared with the results of Diesel-rk software and a good agreement between them is noticed. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.