Abstract— Vegetables oils are simplest route of biofuel utilization in Direct Injection Compression Ignition (DICI) engines however several operational and durability problems are encountered while using straight vegetable oils in CI engines due to their high viscosity and low volatility. In this study, performance and exhaust emission characteristics of Pongamia Pinnata oil blends (BD5, BD10, BD20 and BD30) with mineral diesel were investigated in unheated conditions in a single cylinder 4-Stroke direct injection CI engine at different engine operating torque and constant engine speed 1500 rpm. Analysis of performance parameters such as Brake Specific Fuel Consumption (BSFC), Brake thermal efficiency, Mechanical efficiency and Indicated thermal efficiency and various gaseous exhaust emissions like CO and Nitrogen oxide (NOx) were carried out. Investigation revealed that the performance parameters like Mechanical efficiency increases with increase in biodiesel mixtures and maximum of 68.42% is observed for BD20, Brake specific fuel consumption increases with biodiesel mixtures, thermal efficiency decreases with biodiesel mixtures and it is compared with baseline test with neat mineral diesel. Also emission CO decreases with biodiesel mixtures whereas NOx increased significantly for biodiesel mixtures even with smaller concentration of pongamia oil in the fuel blend.

Index Terms— Biodiesel, Pongamia pinnata, Performance, Emission, Diesel engine

Cite: K Sureshkumar and K Muralidharan, " Performance and Emission Characteristics of Single Cylinder 4-Stroke Diesel Engine Using Pongamia pinnata Methyl Ester (PPME) as Fuel," International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 8-19, April 2014.