An experimental investigation of performance, combustion and emission characteristics of mahua (Madhuca Indica) oil methyl ester on four-stroke direct injection diesel engine

This paper is mainly concerned with an experimental investigation to study the diesel engine performance, combustion and emission characteristics using mahua (Madhuca Indica) biodiesel (mahua oil methyl ester) and its blend in different volumetric proportions with diesel. To start with, the thermo-physical properties of all the fuel blends are evaluated. A four stroke tangentially vertical (TV) single cylinder direct injection (DI) diesel engine with eddy current dynamometer is used for the study under various load conditions. Combustion and emission characteristics for different blends are evaluated in running the engine under steady state conditions. Neat diesel is called B0 and neat (mahua oil methyl ester) biodiesel is called B100. From the experiments, it is seen that B25 gives almost the same brake thermal efficiency as B0 at full load condition, compared to other blends. The blend B0 and B25 give the lowest specific fuel consumption of 0.56 and 0.27 kg/kW.h at no load and full load as compared to all other blends. At no load B100 gives the lowest NOx emission which is 2.52% less compared to B0.