Investigation on the effect of castor oil biodiesel and diethyl eter usege in a diesel engine on engine performance and emissions

The need for energy increases with rapid population growth and technological developments around the world. The harmful emissions from motor vehicles become a major environmental problemleading researcher to explore the alternative fuels because energy resources will be exhausted in the near future (2050). Alcohols and biodiesel fuels obtained from oils can be used as alternative diesel fuels. In this study, diesel engine analysis was established by blending the diesel fuel with diethyl ether and biodiesel in different volumetric ratios.Biodiesel was obtained from castor oil by transesterification method and the mixtures of 10% and 20% by volume were prepared by diethyl ether. The biodiesel fuels are denoted as D100, B100, D50B50, B90DEE10, B80DEE20, D45B45DEE10 and D40B40DEE20 (%40 diesel, %40 biodiesel and %20 diethyl ether) according to their fuel ratios. The tests were performed on a four-stroke, three-cylinder diesel engine at constant speed and different loading ratios (idle-3kW-5kW-7kW). By the way, an experimental study was carried out to investigate the changes in emission and performance parameters by using those fuels. According to experimental results; brake specific fuel consumption increased from %5,4 to %29,4 for all loading ratios compared to diesel fuel (the reference fuel for analysis is diesel fuel) and the highest thermal efficiency was achieved with biodiesel as an improvement of between %0,3 and %1,7. There was a decrease in exhaust gas temperature and mass fuel consumption increased between %5,4 and %29,3. CO emissions were high and CO2 emissions were close to each other. HC emissions increased, while the higher smoke emissions decreased with increase of engine load. NOx emission values increased as the load increased.