Performance and Emissions of Preheated Biodiesel on a Compression Ignition (CI) Engines

Diesel engines are still widely needed and applicable to agriculture, construction, light duty passenger car and heavy duty vehicles. In recent years, limited supply of fossil fuel makes alternative sources of fuel especially biodiesel receiving a lot of attention in the automotive industry. However, in using biodiesel as fuel had created poor fuel-air mixing that generally will produce lower performance and higher emissions than diesel fuel. This phenomenon associated with the fuel properties especially viscosity that higher compared to diesel fuel. The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of preheated biodiesel derived from crude palm oil with 5% blending ratio (B5) at 40°C, 50°C and 60°C on performance and emissions of diesel engine under two different load conditions, which are 50% load and 100% load. A four-cylinder four strokes cycle, water cooled, direct injection engine was used for the experiments and the engine speed was varied from 1500 rpm up to 3000 rpm with the 500 rpm increment. Dynapack chassis dynamometer was used to perform the performance data while Autocheck gas/smoke analyzer and Drager were used to obtain the emissions data. Increased of load and biodiesel fuel temperature promotes more rapid engine performance but exhibit relatively small variations in emissions production.