The primary objective of this work is to assess and examine the combustion properties of non-edible oil feedstock, specifically Azolla, in an Internal Combustion (IC) test Rig. First, a Soxhlet apparatus is used to extract oil from Azolla. This raw oil is then converted into Azolla biofuel. The comparison of Azolla biofuel with non-edible oils like Jatropha biodiesel, castor biodiesel, Neem oil biodiesel, and Karanja biodiesel takes place. In this study, we tested a 10% blend of biodiesel in a diesel engine, which included Azolla10, Jatropha10, Castor10, Neem10, and Karanja10. The researchers measured the physical properties of all fuels and conducted a comparison with American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) standards. An engine with one cylinder and water cooling was employed in the test setup. The diesel engine’s emissions and performance were assessed under various load conditions. Results showed that the Azolla10 blend and diesel fuel delivered similar performance. However, for emissions and Combustion Characteristics like Oxides of Nitrogen (NOx)-920 PPM, Hydrocarbon (HC)-52 PPM, Carbon Monoxide (CO)-0.085%, Carbon dioxide (CO2)-7.38%, In-cylinder Pressure-79 bar at 10 °C, Heat release rate-58 Kw at 0 °C and Mean gas temperature-25 °C. Azolla demonstrated a significant reduction compared to diesel. Based on these experiments, Diesel engines may be able to run on the Azolla blend without any changes.
Naik et al. (Thu,) studied this question.