Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Fuel journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/fuel Full Length Article Experimental investigation on combustion, performance and emission analysis of 4-stroke single cylinder diesel engine fuelled with neem methyl ester-rice wine alcohol-diesel blend Narath Moni Reang ⁎ , Suman Dey, Biplab Debbarma, Madhujit Deb, John Debbarma Mechanical Engineering Department, NIT Agartala, India ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Neem methyl ester Rice wine alcohol Transesterification Blending CI engine ABSTRACT The present world faces the crisis of fossil fuels as it will no longer sustain in the future, gives a knowledge to look on waste resources, where waste rice and neem seed are utilizable for the production of biofuels by the process of fermentation and transesterification. In this paper, the physiochemical properties of the produced biofuels are examined. The 5% rice wine alcohol is used as an additive with neem methyl ester-diesel blend to lower the viscosity and flash point for the better performance in the single cylinder compression ignition engine. Different blends as D90B5RW5, D85B10RW5, D75B20RW5, and D65B30RW5 are prepared and examined ex- perimentally by varying the engine loads (0–100%) at constant engine speed (1500 rpm). Experimental results showed the reduction of carbon dioxide (CO 2) , carbon monoxide (CO), hydrocarbon (HC) and smoke opacity, however oxide of nitrogen (NOx) is found higher. In the performance, D75B20RW5 shows 8% higher brake thermal efficiency and 3.33% lower brake specific fuel consumption compared to diesel. While in the com- bustion the peak cylinder pressure and net heat release rate are seen to be higher for biodiesel blends with additive. 1. Introduction Realization on the global issues like pollutions and other economic aspects, many researchers have taken an enterprise to resolve the cir- cumstances of sustainable society for the imminent decade. Fossil fuels which are inordinately influenced in the energy sector for both the internal and external combustion engines are mitigating as the year past. So, recapitulation on the natural resources, biodiesel admires the auxiliary energy to vanquish the crude oils, as it has identical properties as conventional diesel. Neem plant which are mainly used for the medicinal purposes are also prominent for the general production of neem methyl ester. Neem oil is a non-edible feedstock and also cheaper as compare to other biodiesels [33]. Neem plant has the high efficiency of productivity as its seed contains 20–30% of oil and lived for 180 to 200 years of life span [44]. Neem methyl ester has the predominant characteristic in reduction of emission like CO 2 , HC, CO as compared to other biodiesels and diesel [50]. Rice wine alcohol which are famous in most of the Asian nations like, China, India, Vietnam, Thailand, Phi- lippines, and Japan are prepared by the process of fermentation, fil- tration and sterilization at the temperature of 85 °C [25]. Temperature is one of the major factor for the fermentation and yield of alcohol [19]. Prasad [35] stated that any organic compound that can be transformed into sugars are easily usable as a substrate for fermentation of alcohol. Rice wine alcohol have an opportunity to use as an additive with bio- diesel that has less viscosity and flash point. Also, no emulsification is formed during blending of fuels that help proper atomisation during the combustion. Ragit et al. [37] standardized the transesterification pro- cess to reduce the viscosity as the conventional fuel to 2.7cst/s, alcohol to oil molar ratio at 6:1, 55 °C temperature, 60 min of time with the production yield of 83.36% using 2% potassium hydroxide (KOH) as a catalyst. Balamurugan and Nalini [9] blended diesel with n-propanol and n-butanol at 4% and 8% respectively by volume and found in- creased in brake thermal efficiency by 8.917%, 10.518% at 80% load. But on the other hand, smoke density was found to be increased by 11.338%, 14.063% whereas NOx was seen to be decreased by 11.585%, 14.329%. Dhar et al. [16] studied the production of biodiesel by two- step esterification process obtaining the optimum condition of molar ratio 6:1, temperature 45 °C, 4.5% of catalyst, stirring at 1300 rpm. They observed that the fuel properties lies under the ASTM specifica- tions. Brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC) and brake thermal effi- ciency (BTE) were found to be higher with increase in biodiesel per- centage. Whereas, the brake specific carbon monoxide, brake specific https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fuel.2020.117602 Received 29 August 2019; Received in revised form 6 March 2020; Accepted 8 March 2020 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: nmreang@gmail.com (N.M. Reang). Fuel 271 (2020) 117602 Available online 14 March 2020 0016-2361/ © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T