Diethyl ether additive effect in the performance of single cylinder D I diesel engine with B20 Biodiesel blend fuel

The present work involves in production of methyl ester (Biodiesel) from inedible oils like Jatropa oil and application of its B20 blend fuel with diethyl ether (DEE) as an alternative fuel in D I diesel engine to investigate the performance and properties of test fuel. The methyl ester was obtained by base catalyzed transesterification process and 20% of biodiesel blended with 80% of diesel to form B20. The use of oxygenative additive in blend fuel reduces the ignition delay and combustion period of a diesel engine. This lowers the sulfur and nitrogen oxide emissions with less combustion period by the additive. The results show that the brake thermal efficiency increases with increase in load. The maximum brake thermal efficiency is obtained for diesel, B20 and B20DEE3 respectively at full load. The brake specific fuel consumption decreases and minimum fuel consumption occurred for B20DEE6 fuel at full load. The exhaust gas temperature increases linearly with load and is minimum for B20DEE3. The test fuel property results show that significant improvement in flash point, fire point, viscosity and density, whereas increase in energy content is observed with addition of DEE in B20 blend fuel.