An experimental investigation of emission performance of heterogenous catalyst jatropha biodiesel using RSM

Abstract Tremendous growth in the number of automobiles in developed and developing global economies has exorbitantly boosted competition for petroleum products. Petroleum products derived from fossil fuels are predominantly responsible for environmental pollution as unburnt hydrocarbon (HC), carbon monoxide (CO), oxides of nitrogen (NOx) & carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are released from the fossil fuel combustion. In the view of increasing environmental pollution and stringent emission norms, the present study is concentrated on using Jatropha biodiesel as an alternate fuel source to run variable compression ratio (VCR) diesel engine. The characteristics of VCR diesel engine emission have been evaluated under different compression ratio (CR), operating conditions of load & pressure of fuel injection. In this research work, Jatropha biodiesel diesel blend B30 (30% biodiesel and 70% diesel) and B0 (100% diesel) have been taken as fuel to run the engine. For conducting experiments, load has been varied from 0 to 12 Kg, CR from 14 to 18 and FIP from 180 to 270 bar as per the model of Response Surface Methodology experiments. The experimental investigation showed that the use of the B30 blend reduces HC&CO emissions by about 16.7% and 24% correspondingly in comparison to diesel. However noteworthy rise in NOx&CO2 emissions rate recorded by using the B30 blend as that of diesel. It has been shown that with enhancing in load & CR, HC&CO emissions decreased significantly however increase in CO2 and NOx observed. Advancing FIP, significantly decreases HC&CO emissions as well as tends to increase NOx and CO2 emissions.