Investigation of biodiesel obtained from tomato seed as a potential fuel alternative in a CI engine

ABSTRACT

With growing energy needs, depletion of fossil fuel resources and the alarming increase in atmospheric pollutants, the entire world is slowly switching to alternatives. There are many benefits of using biodiesel obtained from vegetables like tomato which are available locally, such as its higher cetane number, lower sulphur and lower ash content to improve the engine characteristics. From this point of view, an experiment was conducted to study the performance, emission and combustion characteristics of diesel fuel blended with tomato seed oil methyl ester tomato seed methyl ester (TSME) and n-butanol at various loads. Here, TSME was blended in percentages of 5, 10 and 15% with diesel fuel, with the concentration of n-butanol kept constant at 10%. The trends for BTE, EGT and NO_x were similar and increased with blends. At 25% load, the HC emissions were 26 ppm for ND and decreased by 11.53, 23.07 and 34.61%, respectively, for D85B10T5, D80B10T10 and D75B10T15. The CO and smoke emissions were also found to decrease with blend percentages and load. The peak pressure and HRR were found to be higher with ND than the blends. The work thus reveals that blending tomato seed oil with an n-butanol–diesel mixture gave more desirable engine characteristics.

KEYWORDS:

• Tomato seed methyl ester
• n-butanol
• performance
• emission
• combustion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.