Abstract

The present investigation used Turpentine; a volatile fraction of pinus resin as an alternate fuel for diesel fuel. Generally, turpentine possesses moderate cetane number which is not sufficient to operate existing diesel engine. However, this could be admissible along with diesel fuel in the form of blends. Keeping this in mind experiments have been conducted using blends of turpentine and diesel fuel to study its replaceability, performance and emission behaviour. As the investigation involves three parameters such as blend proportion, injection timing and injection pressure, a simultaneous optimisation method called Taguchi was used in the work. This method requires fewer numbers of trials for fixing optimum levels. This is the primary advantage of this method. As per this method nine trials were experimented and its results were used for optimisation. In addition, an ANOVA was also performed for the parameters to evaluate its percentage contribution over the desired output. The results of the taguchi experiment showed that the 40T blend (40% turpentine and 60% diesel) performed better at 29°BTDC injection timing and at 180 bar injection pressure than other blends and had a capacity to cold start the engine. Using the optimum levels, a full range experiment was also conducted using 40T blend to compare its performance and emission behaviour with standard diesel operation. The results of the full range experiment showed that the 40T blend offered approximately 2.5% higher brake thermal efficiency than diesel baseline operation without much worsening the exhaust emission.

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