Original Articles
Hariram V. and Vagesh Shangar
Abstract
The drawbacks of conventional diesel have given rise to the application of biodiesel, especially fuels derived from non-edible feed stocks. In the present study, mahua biodiesel was produced by two step esterification process involving acid esterification, reducing the FFA content from 20% to about 0.5% by addition of 3% conc. H2SO4 and the alkaline esterification was carried using NaOH and KOH catalysts of different amount and molar ratios. Both the catalysts yielded good results at optimum molar ratio of 6:1 and reaction temperature of 62°Cbut NaOH catalyst of 0.8%v/v yielded slightly higher quantity of biodiesel compared to 0.9% v/v KOH at 90 minutes reaction time. The fuel properties were found within the standards and GC/MS, FTIR results were satisfactory. The performance of 100% mahua biodiesel was compared to that of diesel at varying loads on a single cylinder CI engine where moderate reduction of BTE and increase of BSEC was observed. Considerable reduction of CO, HC and smoke emissions were noted along with increase in NOx emissions.