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The majority of transportation vehicles powered with CI (Compression Ignition) engines and operates with petroleum product diesel fuel. Petroleum reserves are vanishing fast and causing environment pollution, global warming, damage to human, animal and vegetation etc. due to their combustion in internal combustion engines. Also, diesel is one of the serious environmental pollution contributors. Due to automobile and industrial usage of fossil fuels, man has to come up with an alternate solution for running the world without the presence of fossil fuels. The bio-fuels are one of best alternatives to Diesel fuel, which are renewable in nature and bio-degradable; burning of biodiesel from bio-oils may be edible/non-edible generates less amount of HC (hydro carbons), CO (carbon monoxide), Smoke due lack of HC presents in the bio based fuel compared conventional HC based fuel.
The properties of biodiesel from cotton seed oil are similar with diesel fuel, also made performance tests on CI engines, shown implication of biodiesel (Murali Krishna & Mallikarjuna, 2006; Murali Krishna & Mallikarjuna, 2009).The biodiesel production using palm, soybean and cottonseed oils reported that, transesterification of natural oil and fats were best method to produce biodiesel (Fangrui & Milford, 1999). Senthil Kumar et al (2003) have investigated on various methods of using Jatropha oil blending, transesterification and dual fuel operation in a CI engine reported that, brake thermal efficiency was better with dual fuel operation. The neat vegetable oils could be used safely in an indirect injection engine than in a direct injection engine (Nwafor, 2003). Production and experimental investigations using vegetable oils reported that, thermal efficiency was comparable (Ramadhas et al., 2004). The heating process leads to decarboxylation of anacardic acid to form cardanol, composition of distilled technical CNSL is approximately 78% cardanol, 8% cardol, 2%polymeric material, < 1% 2-methylcardol, 2.3% heptadecyl homologue triene, 3.8% heptadecyl homologue diene and homologous phenols (Tamanouchi et al., 1997). Biodiesel is replacement for diesel as it is biodegradable and non-toxic with reduced emissions. Also, use of it creates rural employment opportunities and economic growth. The non-edible oils like Cashew Nut Shell Liquid or Oil (CNSL) are very much recommendable for production of biodiesel; also CNSL is a by-product from cashew processing industries. Cashew trees are boon to the country, India is the largest producer of Cashew in the world, and these trees are forever with easy cultivation. The CNSL fuel can power the CI engines at low price compared to diesel fuel. The CNSL is in reddish brown viscous fluid. The difficulties associated with bio-fuel are like high viscosity due to chemical structure and mass of molecular, leads to challenges like pumping, atomization, combustion, gum deposits, sticking of moving parts like piston rings etc. To counter these difficulties, solutions usually adapting are preheating, blending, transesterification etc. So the potential for cashew derived fuels to supplement increasing energy gap is promising, CNSL based Biodiesel production may provide a lot regional and national economic benefits, resolves environmental issues like emissions.
It is observed that from previous studies, use of vegetable oils and blends with diesel are alternative fuel for CI engines, with reduction of their viscosity by preheating, blending, transesterification etc., and without considerable modifications, direct usage of such prepared fuels also may required modification to the engine. This is the reason in this experimental study considered biodiesel preparation and its blends with diesel. In this study, performance of DICI engine with diesel and CNSL Biodiesel in the proportions of 5 to 30% in steps of 5% were investigated, compared with conventional diesel at constant speed 1500 rev/min in respect to various loads.