PERFORMANCE EVALUATION AND EMISSION CHARACTERISTICS OF A WASTE TRANSFORMER OIL AS AN ALTERNATIVE FUEL FOR DIESEL ENGINE

To meet the present requirements of the automotive industry, there is continuous search to improve the performance, exhaust emission, and life of the IC engines. The meet the first two challenges, researchers are working both on newer engine technologies and fuels. The present study focused on non-petroleum renewable and non-polluting fuels to be used for I.C engines. The current study investigates the suitability for using waste transformer oil (WTO) as an alternative fuel for compression ignition (CI) engine. For this purpose different properties of the WTO were determined. The different properties include density, kinematic viscosity, Cetane number, and calorific value, flash and fire points. The investigation includes two parts. In the first part of the investigation, different properties and engine performance were conducted. In the latter part of the investigation WTO was refined by well know transesterification process and again different fuel properties and engine performance were conducted. The diesel fuel vehicles discharge significant amount of pollution like Co, HC, CO2, led, soot which are harmful for the environment. In the present work, three different blends of waste transformer oil in varying proportions of 10%, 20%, 30% with diesel are used. The blends of waste transformer oil are used for investigating engine performance and emission characteristics. Experiments are carried out on a diesel engine, which are a single cylinder four strokes, water cooled and constant speed engine capable of developing a power output of 5.7 kW at 1500rpm.The performance parameters such as break power, specific fuel consumption and thermal efficiency are calculated based on experimental analysis of engine. Emissions such as Carbon Monoxide, Nox, O2, Co and unburned hydro carbon are measured. The data has been analyzed and the results are presented and discussed in this work.