The effect of nickel oxide nano-additives inAzadirachta indicabiodiesel-diesel blend on engine performance and emission characteristics by varying compression ratio

The utilization of biodiesel-diesel blends in compression ignition (CI) engines are a viable option for the current energy crises. But due to better combustion features of biodiesel-diesel blends leading to high NO(x)release from engine exhaust hinders the use of such blends. Usually all of the harmful exhaust emissions like HC and CO reduces marginally, except nitrogen oxides at higher compression ratios with biodiesel blended fuel. The present paper focuses on the study of variation of compression ratio and use of NiO nanoparticles in neem biodiesel-diesel mixture (NB25) at different braking loads. A total of four test fuels of NB25 blend were prepared having nickel oxides at different concentration levels of 25, 50, 75, and 100 ppm. The current findings reveal that the use of 75 ppm of NiO in NB25 blend reduces the amount of thermal NO(x)by 6.2% compared to the absence of nanoparticles. Also, the performance parameters such as brake thermal efficiency improved by 2.9% and brake specific fuel consumption reduced by 1.8%. The presence of 75 ppm of NiO in NB25 not only shows best performance and also lower harmful emission.