An Experimental Study on the Characteristics of DI-CI Engine with the Preheated Waste Cooking Oil Methyl Ester

In the current scenario the driving forces for the research work on the alternative fuels are exhaustion of conventional fossil fuels, high petroleum diesel prices and increased environmental pollution. Biodiesel is one of the promising alternative fuels for petroleum diesel. Generally biodiesel is produced from seed oils and when they are produced from vegetable seed oils, it leads to scarcity of food oils. In such case the biodiesel produced from waste cooking oil (waste cooking oil methyl ester-WCOME)would be one of the best alternatives to the petroleum diesel. The higher viscosity of WCOME is one of the constraints to use directly in a diesel engine. Hence the present work reports the use of preheated WCOME in DI-CI diesel engine. The engine performance and emission characteristics were studied with preheated WCOME and compared them with no preheated WCOME and standard petroleum diesel characteristics. The results revealed that the considerable increase in brake thermal efficiency and decreased brake specific fuel consumption compared to without preheating. Improved emission characteristic was also obtained with preheated WCOME compared to without preheating. However, all the characteristics with preheated WCOME are slightly lower than petroleum diesel, but are very close to them. Hence preheated WCOME can be used in existing DI-CI engine to obtain similar characteristics as that of diesel without any modifications in the engine.