International OPEN ACCESS Journal Of Modern Engineering Research (IJMER) | IJMER | ISSN: 2249–6645 | www.ijmer.com | Vol. 4 | Iss. 8 | Aug. 2014 | 63 | Experimental Investigation of Performance and Emission Characteristics of Simarouba Biodiesel and Its Blends on LHR Engine Vishwanath Kasturi 1 , M. C. Navindgi 2 ( 1 PG Student, Thermal Power Engineering PDACE Gulbarga, Karnataka, India) ( 2 Associate professor, Dept of Mechanical Engineering PDACE Gulbarga, Karnataka, India) I. Introduction Petroleum based fuels play a vital role in rapid depletion of conventional energy sources along with increasing demand and also major contributors of air pollutants. Major portion of today’s energy demand in India is being met with fossil fuels. Hence it is high time that alternate fuels for engines should be derived from indigenous sources. As India is an agricultural country, there is a wide scope for the production of vegetable oils (both edible and non-edible) from different oil seeds. The present work focused only on non-edible oils as fuel for engines, as the edible oils are in great demand and far too expensive. The past work revealed that uses of vegetable oils for engines in place of diesel were investigated. Though the concerned researchers recommended the use of vegetable oils in diesel engines, there was no evidence of any practical vegetable oil source engines. It is known that the efficiency of internal combustion diesel engines changes 38-42%. It is about 60% of the fuel energy dismissed from combustion chamber. To save energy, combustion chamber component are coated with low thermal conduction materials. The effect of thermal barrier coating on the cylinder components like piston crown top, cylinder liner, cylinder head inside and valves. The thermal barrier coated engines are otherwise known as low heat rejection (LHR) engines. Due to the insulation of the cylinder wall the heat transfer through the cylinder walls to the cooling system is reduced which change the combustion characteristics of the diesel engine. To know the changes during combustion the steady-state LHR engines operation have been studied by applying either the first or second law of thermodynamics. The state of the art of the thermal barrier coating is the yattria stabilized zirconia. In addition, other material systems have been investigated for the next generation of TBC. The study also focuses on coating method for Yattria Stabilized Zirconia (YSZ) to improve coating under high load and temperature cyclical conditions encountered in the real engine. The effect of insulation on engine performance, heat transfer characteristics, combustion and emission characteristics are studied and compared with standard (STD) diesel engine II. Materials and Methods The extraction of biodiesel is carried out by base catalyzed transesterification method. Abstract: Diesel is a fossil fuel that is getting depleted at a fast rate. So an alternative fuel is necessary and a need of the hour. simarouba oil, which is cultivated in India at large scales, has a high potential to become an alternative fuel to replace diesel fuel. Direct use of simarouba oil cannot be done, as its viscosity is more than the diesel fuel, and hence affects the combustion characteristics. The simarouba oil is esterified to reduce the viscosity and it is blended with diesel on volume basis in different proportions. The use of thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) to increase the combustion temperature in diesel engines has been pursued for over 20 years. Increased combustion temperature can increase the efficiency of the engine, decrease. However, TBCs have not yet met with wide success in diesel engine applications because of various problems associated with the thermo-mechanical properties of the coating materials. Although, the in-cylinder temperatures that can be achieved by the application of ceramic coatings can be as high as 850-9000C compared to current temperatures of 650-7000C. The increase in the in-cylinder temperatures helped in better release of energy in the case of biodiesel fuels thereby reducing emissions at, almost the same performance as the diesel fuel. Here the effort has been made to determine the performance and emission characteristics of SOME blend with diesel in conventional engine and LHR engine. Keywords: LHR Engine, normal engine Biodiesel, Simarouba oil, SOME, Performance and Emission Characteristics, Thermal barrier coating.