Experimental Studies of a Direct Injection Diesel Engine Fuelled with Light Fraction Pyrolysis Oil-Diesel Blend

Abstract

One of the important problems currently faced by the humanity is disposal of different wastes that originate everywhere. Different wastes are present in houses, villages, municipalities, agricultural lands and industries, and they are found in the form of solid, liquid and gas. It is impossible to completely avoid disposal of wastes. But, it can be minimized by adopting effective waste management practices. Generally, wastes can be categorized into two types viz., (i) non reusable, and (ii) recyclable and reuse. A few examples of non-reusable wastes are broken glass, broken concrete and some of the liquid effluents. Most of the organic wastes can be considered as recyclable or reusable. Few examples include food waste, textile waste, wood waste and agricultural waste. Waste to energy (W2E) is one of the methods adopted in recycling of organic wastes.
Among all the wastes available for waste to energy process, automobile tyres and waste plastics are beleived to have adequate potential of energy source, as they are disposed in a large quantity throughout the world. Pyrolysis is one of the methods for converting waste automobile tyres into energy and value added products. In pyrolysis process, the waste tyres are heated in a closed vessel by external heating with the presence of little oxygen. The evolving volatiles in the pyrolysis reactor are condensed in a condenser to obtain the value added energy or chemicals. Generally, the temperature required for pyrolysis of tyres is in the range of 400-600oC. The process offers three principal products namely, (a) pyrolysis oil, (b) pyrogas and (c) carbon black.
In recent years, the recycling of waste tyres by pyrolysis process has been found to be more attractive and technically feasible. There have been several tyre recycling pilot level and demonstrative plants installed, and commissioned in the world. In such a pyrolysis plant that follows vacuum pyrolysis process, four products are obtained such as, (i) light and heavy fraction oils, (ii) pyro gas, (iii) carbon black and (iv) steel wire. The light and heavy fraction oils are obtained in different condensers, based on the method of condensing the volatiles that are evolved from the pyrolysis reactor. In the present research study, the light fraction pyrolysis oil (LFPO) was examined for its suitability as a partial substitute to diesel fuel for compression ignition (CI) engines. Eight different modules of experimental investigations have been proposed and performed in a single cylinder, four stroke, air cooled, direct injection (DI) diesel engine with a power of 4.4 kW at a constant speed of 1500 rpm. Few fuel and engine modifications were carried out to examine the engine behaviour in terms of combustion, performance and emissions when the engine was run on LFPO mode.....