Performance and emission evaluation of a diesel engine fueled with methyl esters of rubber seed oil

A.S. Ramadhas, C. Muraleedharan and S. Jayaraj

Renewable Energy, 2005, vol. 30, issue 12, 1789-1800

Abstract: Recent concerns over the environment, increasing fuel prices and scarcity of its supply have promoted the interest in development of the alternative sources for petroleum fuels. At present, biodiesel is commercially produced from the refined edible vegetable oils such as sunflower oil, palm oil and soybean oil, etc. by alkaline-catalyzed esterification process. This process is not suitable for production of biodiesel from many unrefined non-edible vegetable oils because of their high acid value. Hence, a two-step esterification method is developed to produce biodiesel from high FFA vegetable oils. The biodiesel production method consists of acid-catalyzed pretreatment followed by an alkaline-catalyzed transesterification. The important properties of methyl esters of rubber seed oil are compared with other esters and diesel. Pure rubber seed oil, diesel and biodiesel are used as fuels in the compression ignition engine and the performance and emission characteristics of the engine are analyzed. The lower blends of biodiesel increase the brake thermal efficiency and reduce the fuel consumption. The exhaust gas emissions are reduced with increase in biodiesel concentration. The experimental results proved that the use of biodiesel (produced from unrefined rubber seed oil) in compression ignition engines is a viable alternative to diesel.

Keywords: Rubber seed oil; Biodiesel; Esterification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (113)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148105000224
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:30:y:2005:i:12:p:1789-1800

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2005.01.009

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().