Investigation on Performance and Emissions of a Single Cylinder Marine Diesel Engine Fuelled with Diesel and Crude Palm Biodiesel Oil

Numbers of studies has been executed globally in order to seek the alternative way to replace the current fossil-fuel with regards to the rising of fuel-energy demand, running-out of petroleum reserves and to attain the cleaner atmosphere. For that reason, the exploration and studies on Biodiesel Fuel (BDF) has been one of the potential alternative. Thus, a research has been carried out to investigate the effects on performance and exhaust gas emissions of a single cylinder, 4-stroke marine diesel engine with capacity of 638 cc using biodiesel blends derived from Crude Palm Oil (CPO) along with neat diesel (DSL) that driven as standard reference. The CPO fuel was blended with DSL in various concentration to produce blended fuels that comprise CPO5, CPO10, CPO15 and CPO20. The CPO biodiesel was chosen in the study due to the availability and readiness of its feedstock sources in Malaysia all over the year. Moreover this research was focusing on marine engine compared to the most today’s research which commonly engaged with automotive engines. The outcomes of this research found that the used of CPO blends fuels promotes to some extent of better performance of marine diesel engine and comparable exhaust gas emissions. The finding from this research also verified that the different levels of blending concentration have its pros and cons on the effects of engine performance and gas emissions. The used of crude palm biodiesel fuels however do good to the marine diesel engines which it can be ran without adjustments in equatorial regions.