Author(s):

Babban Yadav, Ryozo Noguchi, Peeyush Soni and Emmanuel Abah

Abstract: Biofuels derived from microalgae have potential to replace fossil fuel and other biofuels. The current study evaluated the performance and emission characteristics of microalgae fuel in agricultural tractor. Microalgae (Desmodesmus sp.) was treated with Hydrothermal Liquefaction (HTL) process to extract the lipids. Physical and chemical properties of microalgae oil were used to evaluate the performance and emissions characteristics in agricultural tractor’s engine. With microalgae oil, two other biofuels, i.e., fossil diesel (Diesel No. 2) and Soybean Methyl Ester (SME100) were also used to provide a comparative result. A commercial software “Diesel-RK” was used to simulate selected engine (Perkins 4.236) which is widely utilized in Massey Ferguson 255. Microalgae oil showed slightly lower power (44.80 kW) and torque (164.9 N-m) compared to diesel No. 2 (54.5 kW, 200 N-m) and SME100 (51.27 kW, 188.34 N-m) at full load and maximum rated speed (2600 rpm). Specific fuel consumption of microalgae oil is higher than the other two fuels, which can be explained by the lower heating value of microalgae oil. NO₂ emissions and particulate matter formation were lowered when the engine was filled with microalgae oil.

Pages: 2319-2326  |  1355 Views  360 Downloads

Download (796KB)