EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION ON THE PERFORMANCE AND EMISSION CHARACTERISTICS OF A CI ENGINE WITH RICE BRAN AND MICRO ALGAE BIODIESEL BLENDS

It is always needed that to find an alternate of Diesel due to its price fluctuations and depletion rate. Biodiesel is the proven technology for a quite long time. As a most populated country, in India biodiesel from a non edible source is the preferred one. Rice bran and algae are found to be low cost biodiesel source from many reports. Rice bran is a by product and algae are considered to be non edible source. Rice bran oil methyl esters (RME) and micro algae oil methyl esters (MAME) were prepared using transesterification process. A test was carried out in a constant speed, single cylinder diesel engine with their blends viz., RME 10, RME 20, MAME 10, MAME 20 to test their performance and emission characteristics. The test was conducted at five sets of loads and three injection timings. The biodiesel blends recorded slightly high brake specific fuel consumption values and less brake thermal efficiency values than Diesel. The results shown reduced carbon emissions (UHC, CO and smoke) for the blends compared to pure diesel. According to the test results, micro algae oil biodiesel performed very close to pure diesel.