The effect of tri-fuel blends on engine characteristics of a direct injection diesel engine with exhaust gas recirculation

Biofuels are the most promising alternative to petro-diesel. In this work, the combined effect of mahua biodiesel and 1-Hexanol is studied on the engine characteristics. The concentration of both 1-Hexanol and mahua biodiesel is varied, 10%, 20%, and 30% each with diesel fuel. Common rail direct injection diesel engine is used in this study. Engine load is varied from 20% to 80% in step of 20%, the speed of the engine is constant throughout the experiment. Biofuel blends showed improved cylinder pressure and mean gas temperature at a higher engine load. At 60% load, 10H10M80D (10% 1-Hexanol/10% mahua biodiesel/80% diesel) showed 3.45% lower thermal efficiency and 6.11% higher fuel consumption compared to diesel. At 60% load, all the biofuel blends showed 50% lower carbon monoxide emission. At 60% load, 10H10M80D showed 33.33% lower hydrocarbon emission and 0.96% higher nitrogen oxide emission compared to baseline readings. The biofuel blends are less sensitive to exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) due to the oxygenated nature of biofuels. With 20% EGR, at 60% load, 10H10M80D showed 39.48% lower nitrogen oxide compared to no EGR. The results of 10H10M80D showed the best performance at all loads.