Effect of acetone as an oxygenated additive with used sunflower oil biodiesel on performance, combustion and emission in diesel engine.

A major problem that is confronting mankind is the rapid depletion of fossil resources creating an energy demand along with their environmental impact. Therefore, finding an alternate energy source is the primary goal to attain sustainable development. Biodiesel is a promising alternate energy source for compression ignition engines. But it has some drawbacks like lower thermal efficiency, higher emission of smoke, NOx, CO and HC. Adding fuel additives with biodiesel-diesel blends is a fruitful method to overcome these problems. In this work, acetone is used as an oxygenated fuel additive in the volumetric proportion of 5%, 10%, and 15% with biodiesel-diesel blend and named as B20A5, B20A10 and B20A15. The performance, combustion, and emission characteristics of single-cylinder, four-stroke, water-cooled vertical diesel engine has been evaluated. The experimental results revealed that B20A15 has resulted in a nominal increase in brake specific fuel consumption by 8%, brake thermal efficiency of 1%, and reduction in CO by 18.4%, smoke opacity by 4.46%, HC by 1.42%, and NOx by 4.36% when compared to diesel at full load condition.