A Comparative Study of Fuel Filterability, Performance, and Emission Characteristics in CI Engine Fuelled with a Dual Biodiesel Mixture Blended with Conventional Diesel

Biodiesels are widely recognized as a leading choice among the alternative options to traditional petrodiesel fuel due to their significant technical and economic advantages. The transesterification process was utilized to prepare biodiesel from palm and prosopis juliflora oil, using NaOH as the catalyst and methanol as the alcohol in this particular experiment. Palm and juliflora biodiesel mixture was prepared as PJ0, PJ20, PJ40, PJ60, PJ80 and PJ100 by weight percentage (0, 20, 40, 60, 80, and 100%). Based on the physio-chemical properties, PJ60 (B100) was selected as a superior blend and mixed with pure diesel to create different test fuels with varying biodiesel (B0, B20, B30, B40, and B100) concentrations. The experiment examined a four-stroke, single-cylinder CI engine's fuel filterability, performance and emission characteristics. The results indicated the filter blocking tendency value of B20 as 1.36, which is in line with ASTM standard (D2068-14), also lower pressure drop and higher soaking strength among other blends. The B20 blend increased brake-specific fuel consumption by 0.27 kg/kW-h at 3.84%, and brake thermal efficiency was 32.64%, closer to neat diesel in full load. Hydrocarbon, carbon monoxide and smoke emissions of B20 blends were decreased by 2.6, 2.5, and 9.42%, respectively. Besides, NOx emission exhibited a significant increase compared to base diesel. The above results aided the conclusion that the B20 mixture holds the potential of alternate fuel for IC engines.