Performance Evaluation of Karanja Biodiesel Used as a Fuel in Diesel Engine

Abstract:     
An experimental study was carried out to compare the parameter - Brake Power (BP), Specific Fuel Consumption (SFC), Brake Thermal Efficiency (BTE) and Exhaust Gas Temperature (EGT) - of different compositions of biodiesel and conventional diesel. Tests were performed on a single cylinder direct injection engine operating on diesel fuel, Karanja biodiesel and blends of diesel and Karanja biodiesel in proportions of 100/0%, 80/20%, 60/40% and 40/60% (v/v). The design approach based on Taguchi’s orthogonal arrays was adopted for carrying out experiments. The results show that Karanja biodiesel can be conveniently used as a diesel substitute in Compression Ignition (CI) engine. There was an increase in BTE, BP and a reduction in SFC for Karanja biodiesel blends with diesel. An Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model was also prepared by using some experimental data for training and standard back-propagation algorithm for the CI engine.

Keywords: biodiesel, performance, brake thermal efficiency, specific fuel consumption, ANN

Accepted Paper Series