Performance and emission characteristics of cashew nut shell oil on the CI engine

This article is an effort to address the need for a non-cooking oil-based biodiesel. Here, the experimental work is done on a single cylinder, direct injection CI engine using cashew nut shell oil biodiesel blends under constant speed. The cashew nut shell liquid (CNSL) biodiesel is blended with the diesel fuel and used as biodiesel blend. Blends used for testing are B20, B40 and B60. The effect of the fuels on engine power, brake thermal efficiency (BTE) and exhaust gas temperature was determined by performance tests. The influences of blends on CO, CO₂, HC and NO_x emissions were investigated by emission tests. The BTE values of biodiesel are closer to diesel. Compared to diesel, all the biodiesel blends gave lesser unburnt hydrocarbon (HC), carbon monoxide (CO) and smoke emissions. Slightly higher NO_x emissions were found in CNSL biodiesel blends, which is typical of the other biodiesels.