Investigating the Performance and Emission Characteristics of a Variable Compression Ratio Diesel Engine Fueled with Waste Plastic Oil

Abstract

Rapid depletion, rising prices and hazardous environmental issues related to conventional fossil fuel resources are the major concern today all over the world. And the solution is to go beyond the conventional approach and find an alternative which can replace the existing fossil fuels and meet the requirements upto significant extent. In the same context waste plastic oil can be used as an alternative to conventional fuels as it has dual advantage, first is extraction of valuable energy content in the waste plastic and the second is to give a solution for huge problem of disposing the waste plastic generated by the various household and industrial activities. In this work the performance and emissions of waste plastic oil was compared and analyzed with standard diesel on a four stroke, single cylinder, water cooled TV1 model 3.5 Kw diesel engine. The blend used was 10%-25% waste plastic oil in diesel. The performance and emissions were obtained and then compared with the standard diesel fuel. Various parameters such as Brake Thermal Efficiency, Brake Specific Fuel Consumption, Exhaust Gas Temperature are determined at all operating load conditions and at variable compression ratio 16-18 and emissions such as CO, CO2, HC and NOXare analyzed.