Proceedings of National Conference NCIET 2013 ISBN: 978-1-4276-5484-7 27- 28 December 2013 Gudlavalleru Engineering College Page 176 Performance Evaluation, Combustion, Emission and Vibration Characteristics of DI-CI engine using Chicken Fat Biodiesel K Srinivasa Rao Mechanical Engineering, Sai Spurthi Inst. of Tech., Sathupally, India, 507303 profksrmechanical@gmail.com Dr. A Ramakrishna Mechanical Engineering, A U College of Engineering, Visakhapatnam, India, 530003 P V Rao Mechanical Engineering, A U College of Engineering, Visakhapatnam, India, 530003 ABSTRACT Biodiesel is a renewable fuel produced from vegetable seed oils and animal fats. It is an environmentally friendly fuel and has potential to provide comparable engine characteristics. The present study was focused to examine the performance, combustion, emission and vibration characteristics of constant speed water cooled stationary direct injection diesel engine. Biodiesel produced by transestirification process from waste chicken fat is used to test the engine. The engine was tested at ¼, ½, ¾ and full load conditions with pure chicken fat bio diesel (CFBD) and its diesel blends B20 (20%CFBD + 80% Diesel), B40 (40% CFBD + 60% Diesel) and results were compared with standard base line Diesel B0 (PD). The results of the experiments revealed that performance and combustion characteristics of CFBD are almost similar to diesel fuel. The significant reduction in emissions were also observed with CFBD. The vibration parameter is significantly affected by the fuel and axis of measurement. The magnitude of vibration acceleration in vertical axis was more than that in other two axes for all fuels. All the results obtained with CFBD fuel were comparable with diesel and also CFBD fuel satisfies all the requirements as per standards. Hence the CFBD fuel can be used in existing diesel engine without any engine modification. Keywords Diesel engine, diesel – biodiesel fuel blends, combustion, emission, performance and vibration analysis. 1. INTRODUCTION Research on renewable fuel “Biodiesel” is deemed to be essential in the present world. The term “biodiesel” commonly refers to fatty acid methyl or ethyl esters made from vegetable oils or animal fats, whose properties are good enough to be used in diesel engines [1]. Biodiesel has been considered as an ideal alternative fuel for diesel fuel. Biodiesel is an environmentally friendly fuel and has the potential to provide comparable engine performance results [2]. Biodiesel has much less air pollution due to its higher oxygen content and less aromatic compounds and sulfur. One exception to this is nitrogen oxide (NO X ) emissions, which is slightly higher during the biodiesel usage. Proper tuning of the engine can minimize this problem [3-5]. However, the other kinds of regular exhaust emissions like hydrocarbons (HC) and carbon monoxide (CO) are significantly reduced by biodiesel [6]. The decrease of fossil fuels could considerably reduce pollutants; this can be realized by replacing fossil fuel with renewable fuels. Sustainable renewable energy sources will play a key role in the world’s future energy supply [7]. The fossil fuels reserves are limited and depleting day by day as consumption is increasing very rapidly. Moreover their use is alarming the environmental problems to the society. Hence Universities and Research centers have been working on projects, so as to get new energy resources from biofuels. 2. EXPERIMENTATION Four stroke single cylinder DI engine is used for the present study. Fig. 1 is the photograph of engine used for test showing various equipment modules. Table 1 shows the detailed specification of test engine. The required combustion parameters of the engine were measured by engine data logger designed by Tech-Ed, Bangalore, India. The software employed is “Lab- View” which captures the combustion pressure data and convents it into graphical form by collecting crank angle history from encoder . Fig.1 Engine Test Rig Chicken fat biodiesel (CFBD) produced by transesterification process is used to run the engine. The various properties of CFBD, diesel fuel and biodiesel standards (Indian and American) are given in table 2. The CFBD in pure form B100 (100% CFBD), its diesel blends B20 (20% CFBD + 80% diesel) and B40 (40% CFBD + 60% diesel) are considered for test the engine. The engine was also tested with diesel (PD) to study the comparison. Engine was operated at four loads of 0.93(¼), 1.86(½), 2.79 (¾) and 3.72 kW (full load). Fuel consumption is measured to calculate brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC) and brake thermal efficiency (BTE). Table.1 Engine Specifications Manufacture & model Kirloskar Oil Engine & AV1 Engine Single Cylinder DI-CI Admission of air Naturally aspirated Bore/ Stroke 80 mm/110 mm Compression ratio 16.5:1 Max power 3.72 kW @1500 rpm