Investigation of Performance and Emission Characteristics of Diesel Blends with Pine Oil

It has been posted as a challenge for the researchers to identify an alternate fuel source for the petroleum fuels. This had become a major concern as the harmful pollutants are being produced in the exhaust of engines. The present works aims at the suitability study of esterified pine oil blended with diesel fuel as a replacement of diesel in an unmodified CI engine. The direct pine oil is a source obtained from agriculture. It has the innate characters like high viscosity, high calorific value and low cetane number values. It was found that esterified pine oil blended with diesel fuel could be successfully used with acceptable performance and better thermal efficiency. From the experimental investigation it is found that by blending pine oil with diesel, brake thermal efficiency can be increased up to 25%, friction power can be reduced by 4 kW. All the emission were observed to be low for the blended samples. The major contents like CO2 and NOx were decreased by 30%. It is suggested to replace the diesel with pine oil blend for applications with low friction power and will thus help in achieving energy economy and rural economy development.