Performance, Combustion and Emission Characteristics Improvements of Rapeseed Methyl Ester using Surface Response Methodology

The main aim of the present study is to improve the performance of Rapeseed Methyl Ester (RME) and to reduce the emissions in 4-stroke, single cylinder, water cooled, variable compression ratio (VCR) engine by using surface response methodology. The performance factors used in this study are brake thermal efficiency, brake specific fuel consumption, the combustion factors are maximum pressure and net heat release rate and the emission factors used in this study are hydro carbons, carbon monoxide, carbon di-oxide, nitric oxides and INDUS smoke number. Experiments are carried out at 20%, 40%, and 100% of RME-Diesel blends by volume. Derringers Desirability approach is used for optimization of the VCR engine factors. RME-Diesel blends (%) and brake power of the engine are used as the main operational factors for optimization of the VCR diesel engine using response surface method (RSM). At a compression ratio of 18, 24.96% RME-Diesel blend, 1.893 kW Brake power, engine has the optimized performance and minimum emissions. It is observed that the experimental results and mathematical results are in good agreement with each other. At these optimized input factors, the error in percentage for output responses i.e. brake thermal efficiency, brake specific fuel consumption, Hydro carbons, Carbon monoxide, Carbon di-oxide, Nitric oxides, INDUS smoke number are found as 1.85%, 16.42%, 21.3%, 13.16%, 14.87%, 7.36%, 3.26% respectively.