TY - JOUR
TI - Production of gaseous fuel from jatropha oil by cerium oxide based catalytic fuel reactor and its utilisation on diesel engine
AU - Mylswamy Thirunavukkarasu
AU - Ramasamy Ravindran
AU - Ganapathy Saravanan C
AU - Natarajan Rajamanickam
JN - Thermal Science
PY - 2016
VL - 20
IS - 14
SP - 1127
EP - 1135
PT - Article
AB - In this study, an attempt is made to produce a hydrocarbon fuel from jatropha  vegetable oil for Diesel engine applications. The "catalytic cracking" a  process recently introduced by the researchers is chosen as an alternative  method to trans-esterification process to match the fuel properties to  diesel. Jatropha vegetable oil was cracked into a gas using the cerium oxide  catalyst in a fixed bed catalytic reactor. The produced gas is introduced at  constant rate into the inlet manifold of the Diesel engine. The experimental  work was carried out in single cylinder water cooled direct injection Diesel  engine coupled with eddy current dynamometer. The combustion parameters are  measured by AVL combustion analyser. From the experimental results, the  increase in brake thermal efficiency of the engine for full load was observed  to be 10% (relative) compared with diesel. Notably, emissions such as HC, CO,  and smoke are reduced by 18%, 61%, and 18%, respectively, when compared with  diesel.