PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF BIO DIESEL BLENDS EXTRACTED FROM NEWLY DEVELOPED BIODIESEL PROCESSOR

Abstract

Under the ever looming threat of energy crisis production and use of biodiesel promises a relievable and environment friendly solution. In this light, design and construction of an automated biodiesel plant can crank up and simplify the production process. Extraction of biodiesel from vegetable oil is time consuming and requires human involvement to perform and keep track of chemical titration, stirring and washing the product for each batch of production. A well designed system can significantly eliminate human interaction and expedite the whole process. For meeting our energy demand, Bangladesh is mostly dependent on natural gas and import of fossil fuels from foreign countries. This dependency leaves our economy vulnerable and susceptible to international market shocks and supply upset. The concept of using biodiesel is still in its infancy in Bangladesh though she grows many different kinds of crops suitable for biofuel production. Construction of an inexpensive automated biodiesel plant can help produce biodiesel in large scale and make a breakthrough in our economy as no such effort has been undertaken so far. It is a novel endeavor that seeks to make biodiesel production cheaper, easier and popularize in our country. To achieve the desired aim this paper focuses on implementation of the construction of a cheap, compact and automatic system that will exhaustively reduce human interactions as well as the processing time and increase the biodiesel yield. For this reason an automated biodiesel processor was designed and built utilizing a programmable logic controller (PLC) in conjunction with pumps, solenoid valves, level sensors, temperature sensors, etc. Upon the completion of a full cycle the automatic biodiesel production plant delivers certified biodiesel product to the end users and the leftover byproducts are collected for further recycling. Different batches of biodiesel were produced and a comparative study of the physical properties such as the density, kinematic viscosity, flash point, calorific value etc. were measured and result found satisfactory. The performance characteristics such as Brake Power (BP), Specific fuel consumption (SFC), mass of fuel consumed (mf), Brake Thermal Efficiency (BTE), exhaust gas emissions etc. of the diesel engine by these fuel samples were determined and the results were thoroughly studied.