A numerical study on the performance, combustion and emission parameters of a compression ignition engine fuelled with diesel, palm stearin biodiesel and alcohol blends

A numerical simulation has been carried out in this study to evaluate the effect of alcohol addition to the blends of diesel and palm stearin biodiesel on the performance, combustion and emission of a diesel engine. The commercial software Diesel-RK has been used in this study to simulate a single-cylinder, naturally aspirated, direct injection, four-stroke diesel engine. The simulated results have been validated against experimental observation for the base fuel diesel. The effects of two alcohols, namely ethanol and methanol have been separately investigated and compared. The results indicate that although the brake-specific fuel consumption is slightly increased, the other performance characteristics and the entire combustion and emission parameters are improved with alcohol addition to diesel–biodiesel blends. The instantaneous heat release rate, ignition delay and oxides of nitrogen emission are found to be more with methanol than with ethanol. The diesel–biodiesel blend also shows better combustion and emission characteristics than that of diesel except oxides of nitrogen emission.