Experimental Study on Performance and Combustion Analysis of a Diesel Engine Fueled with Diesel and Jatropha Oil Blended with Heptane

This work focuses on blending Jatropha oil with diesel fuel and heptane to improve its physico-chemical characteristics for production of blends and their use as fuel in a diesel engine. The influence of the heptane content was evaluated by comparing the results obtained from the engine (performance and combustion parameters) with those of the diesel fuel and straight Jatropha oil. The results obtained show an improvement in engine performance especially at low loads. Specifically, a reduction in the specific fuel consumption of the engine is obtained when the heptane content in the mixture is around 10% compared to that obtained with pure Jatropha oil. The best results were obtained with the blend containing 70% Jatropha oil, 20% diesel fuel and 10% heptane (J70G20H10). Overall engine efficiency and exhaust gas temperatures are comparable for all fuels tested. Engine combustion parameters are improved with J70G20H10. The results obtained with J70G20H10 are close to those of the engine operating on diesel fuel. The cyclic dispersion is low with coefficients of variation of the indicated mean effective pressure (COVIMEP) whose values are less than 10%. The lowest values of the COVIMEP are obtained with the blend J70G20H10.

Study of the Limit of the Technological Transition in the Field of Methanisation in Senegal (from Laboratory Scale to <i>in-Situ</i>Biodigester)

The Anaerobic digestion in Senegal is of particular interest to the scientific community given the availability of substrates and their distribution throughout the country. However, from a technological point of view, the existing installations seem to be obsolete, which does not allow to reproduce the results of the laboratory tests. Thus, the present study aims to take stock of the situation in relation to the studies carried out in laboratories and those concerning the actual monitoring of the bio-digesters in situ. In fact, most experimental bio-digesters operate under optimal implementation conditions with strict control of input and output parameters. However, this is not the case for reactors installed in the field, as these so-called bio-digesters are exposed to real environmental conditions with a periodic variation of the physic-chemical parameters in the reactors throughout the day. This leads to a differential behavior of the micro-organisms, thus affecting their performance. This results in lower yields for those digesters operating under real environmental conditions.

Temperature Dependence of Density,Viscosity,Thermal Conductivity and Heat Capacity of Vegetable Oils for Their Use as Biofuel in Internal Combustion Engines

This work gives tools to overcome the difficulty to determine experimentally physical properties for vegetable oils within the range of temperature typically observed during the injection phase in a diesel engine. Knowing vegetable oils’ physical properties to these ranges of temperature is of fundamental importance when modeling their combustion in diesel engine. However, vegetable oils’ experimental physical properties data are rare in the literature for temperature above 523 K. This paper describes experimental measurements and estimation methods for density, dynamic viscosity, thermal conductivity and heat capacity of vegetable oils for this particular range of temperature. The methodology uses several correlative methods using group contribution approach for each property and compares experimental data with predicted one to select the more accurate model. This work has shown the rapeseed and jatropha oils’ physical properties can be satisfactorily predicted as a function of temperature using group contribution approach.