Novel xanthium strumarium and mesua assamica biodiesel-diesel blends: Fuel properties, cost analysis and emission profile in variable compression ratio CI engine

This study investigates the various fuel properties and emission analysis of novel xanthium strumarium biodieseldiesel and mesua assamica biodiesel-diesel blends in a single cylinder variable compression ratio (VCR) engine. Nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), and hydrocarbons (HC) were among the emission parameters that were examined at various load (0 to 9 kg) and CR (14, 16 and 18) and contrasted with diesel fuel. To conduct a comparative analysis with diesel fuel (B00), biodiesel blends of varying volumes have been prepared such as B10X (10 % biodiesel and 90 % diesel), B20X (20 % biodiesel and 80 % diesel), B30X (30 % biodiesel and 70 % diesel), B100X (100 % biodiesel) for xanthium strumarium biodiesel and B10M, B20M, B30M and B100M for mesua assamica biodiesel-diesel blends. The various fuel properties were estimated as per standard methods of American Society for Testing Materials (ASTM). The evaluation of physicochemical parameters suggested that blended fuel can increases the cold flow performance as compared to neat biodiesel fuel. The calorific value determination suggested that the higher blended ratio is incompetent as energy content of blended fuel decreases significantly with increase of biodiesel proportion. Blended fuel of xanthium strumarium and mesua assamica showed an increasing trend of cetane number (CN) as the proportion of biodiesel increases in blend. The increasing percentage of CN for mesua assamica biodiesel-diesel blends are found to be high (1.62 %, 3.33 % and 5.57 % for B10M, B20M and B30M respectively) as compared to xanthium strumarium blends due to the presence of higher saturation in mesua assamica biodiesel. The emission analysis of biodiesel-diesel blends showed that the percentage emission of HC and CO decreases whereas the NOx emission increases as the biodiesel proportion increases in blends. The maximum NOx emission was shown by xanthium strumarium blended fuel is 9.54 % and mesua assamica blends is 9.21 %. Higher unsaturation content in xanthium strumarium biodiesel leads to high NOx emission.