Title: Diagnosing the effects of pilot fuel quality on exergy terms in a biogas run dual fuel diesel engine

Authors: Bibhuti B. Sahoo; Ujjwal K. Saha; Niranjan Sahoo

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Synergy Institute of Engineering and Technology, Dhenkanal 759001, Odisha, India. ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Guwahati 781039, Assam, India. ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Guwahati 781039, Assam, India

Abstract: This work presents the exergy balances of biogas dual fuel combustion modes using two different pilot fuels in a single-cylinder diesel engine. The main focus is on the use of biodiesel (BD) as a pilot in place of fossil diesel fuel. The results reveal that the important exergy loss recovery sources are the exhaust gas and cooling water exergy. By accessing these losses, there is an increase of 28–30% in work exergy for dual fuel modes as compared to diesel mode. Use of BD, in place of diesel as a pilot, reduces the maximum exergy efficiency roughly by 2%.

Keywords: biodiesel; biogas; dual fuel diesel engines; exergy loss recovery; fuel quality; combustion modes; biofuels; exergy efficiency.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEX.2012.045062

International Journal of Exergy, 2012 Vol.10 No.1, pp.77 - 93

Received: 18 Sep 2010
Accepted: 14 Jul 2011

Published online: 24 Jan 2012 *

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