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Techno-economic assessment of coconut biodiesel as a potential alternative fuel for compression ignition engines

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Abstract

Over the past years, there were dramatic improvements in identifying and assessing various feedstocks for the production of biodiesel fuels. To promote a particular feedstock as a renewable source of energy, it is important to analyze their energy, economic, and engine performance characteristics. The current work attempts to evaluate the net energy and economic indices for both fossil diesel and coconut-blended diesel (B20) considering the diesel consumption by the Indian railways. Further, we present the experimental results of a multi-cylinder diesel engine operated with neat coconut biodiesel (B100) and fossil diesel at various load and speed conditions. The engine experiments reveal that the coconut biodiesel exhibits leaner combustion and shorter ignition delay than fossil diesel. Lower amount of carbon monoxide, hydrocarbon, and smoke emission is observed in the case of coconut biodiesel, with higher levels of nitric oxide (14%) and fuel consumption than diesel. The coefficient of variation in indicated mean effective pressure is within the range of better driveability zone for both the fuels at all test conditions. Overall the engine performance, emission and combustion results with neat coconut biodiesel are favorable with a penalty in NO emission at high load conditions. The techno-economical study highlights higher production cost per liter of B20 than the cost of fossil diesel. However, the net energy ratio (NER) for B20 is 1.021, favoring higher output than diesel and thus lowers the dependency on crude oil.

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Funding

The authors acknowledge the Science and Engineering Research Board, Department of Science and Technology (DST), India [No. ECR/2016/001059] for providing the necessary funding.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Automotive Research Centre, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, 632 014, India

    Thangaraja Jeyaseelan & Vignesh Srinivasan

Authors
  1. Thangaraja Jeyaseelan
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  2. Vignesh Srinivasan
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Correspondence to Thangaraja Jeyaseelan.

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Responsible editor: Philippe Garrigues

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Highlights

• Demonstrated the potential of coconut biodiesel as an alternate energy source

• Coconut has a dominance of short chain saturated esters

• Ignition delay and combustion duration are lower with coconut biodiesel

• Coconut exhibits lower smoke and unburned hydrocarbon emissions

• B20 exhibits higher net energy ratio and energy productivity

Appendix

Appendix

Nomenclature and abbreviations

bTDC:

before top dead center

B100:

coconut biodiesel

B20:

20% coconut biodiesel blended with 80% diesel

B15:

15% coconut biodiesel blended with 85% diesel

B5:

5 % coconut biodiesel blended with 95% diesel

BC:

benefit to cost ratio

BSEC:

brake specific energy consumption

BMEP:

brake mean effective pressure

FER:

fossil energy ratio

FFA:

free fatty acid

FLP:

fuel line pressure

CCF:

cost capacity factor

CN:

cetane number

CO:

carbon monoxide

COVIMEP:

coefficient of variation in indicated mean effective pressure

LCSF:

long chain saturation factor

NER:

net energy ratio

NEV:

net energy value

Qnet:

net heat release rates

SOI:

start of injection

UBHC:

unburnt hydrocarbon

USR:

unsaturation to saturation ratio

$/l:

US dollars per liter

$/kg:

US dollars per kilogram

kcal/kg:

kilocalories per kilogram

kg oil/ha:

kilograms of oil per hectare

kg/L:

kilograms per liter

kg/$:

kilograms per US dollar

kg/MJ:

kilograms per megajoule

kt:

kilotonnes

kt/year:

kiloton per year

kJ/mol:

kilojoules per mole

kJ/kWh:

kilojoules per kilo Watt hour

mg/m3:

milligrams per cubic meter

MJ/L:

megajoules per liter

MJ/ha:

megajoules per hectare

MJ/FU:

megajoules per functional unit

MJ/kg:

megajoules per kilogram

MJ/$:

megajoules per US dollar

Nuts/ha:

coconuts per hectare

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Thangaraja, J., Srinivasan, V. Techno-economic assessment of coconut biodiesel as a potential alternative fuel for compression ignition engines. Environ Sci Pollut Res 26, 8650–8664 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-04096-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-04096-9

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