Investigations on Partial Addition of n-Butanol in Sunflower Oil Methyl Ester Powered Diesel Engine

Research focused in the present paper to evaluate the combustion, performance, and emission characteristics of refined biodiesel (refined biofuel) such as sunflower oil methyl ester (SOME) with the partial addition of n-butanol (butanol) in it. Various characteristics of butanol-SOME blends with varying volume percentage of butanol such as 5, 10, 15, and 20 in butanol-SOME blends were compared with the characteristics of neat SOME (100%) and neat diesel (100%). It is investigated that with an increase in butanol content from 5% to 20% in butanol-SOME blends at full load condition, brake-specific fuel consumption, and NOx emissions were increased by 11% and 43%, respectively, while brake thermal efficiency (BTE) was decreased by 8%. At full load condition, for all the selected fuels hydrocarbon (HC) emissions were found to be negligible, i.e., less than 0.12 g/kWh. Carbon monoxide (CO) emissions at full load condition for the four butanol-SOME blends were observed to be four to six times more than observed CO emissions in case of neat SOME and neat diesel. Various characteristics of all the selected fuels were compared in order to finalize the promising alternate sustainable renewable fuel. Thus, study reports the solution for increase in demand and price of shortly diminishing conventional diesel fuel which is widely used for power generation and also to reduce the serious issues concerned with environmental pollution due to usage of neat diesel.