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Go to Editorial ManagerThis study investigates the effect of Castor oil on the pollutants emissions in the continuous combustion chamber. The bio-blend fuels used are mixtures of Castor oil with two types of hydrocarbon fuels (gas oil and kerosene). The pollutants measured include carbon monoxide CO, unburned hydrocarbon UHC, soot and nitrogen oxide NOx . It is found that all pollutants have less emissions when using Castor oil blended in different percentages of 5% , 7%, and 10% . The lower emission with Castor oil blends due to the existence of oxygen O2 in the chemical structure of the Castor oil which is sufficient to seek the complete combustion. The test were conducted through the range of equivalence ratio between (0.85-1.7) . Results showed that Castor oil blends with gas oil brings a reduction of about 71.2% in CO, 22.1% in UHC, 37.8% in NOx and 29.6% in soot emissions from that of pure gas oil. But, blends with kerosene, showed a reduction of about 70.6% in CO, 20% in UHC, 35.8% in NOx and 29% in soot emissions compared with those of pure kerosene.
Biodiesel produced from vegetable oils is a good alternative clean diesel. The present study was conducted because there are some variations or contradictions in literature on the use of CaO heterogeneous catalyst. In this study, biodiesel was produced from sunflower vegetable oil and methanol in presence of commercial calcium oxide catalyst in batch mechanical stirrer reactor. The effect of three operating conditions, methanol mole ratio (4-12), reaction time (0.5-2.5 h) and catalyst amount (2-10 %), on the yield of biodiesel was studied at constant reaction temperature of 60 oC. Response surface methodology (RSM) was used with central composite design (CCD) of experiments. Polynomial correlation was found for the dependent variable of the process (yield of biodiesel), satisfactorily predicted at 95% confidence level. The optimum yield biodiesel was about 98% and at operating condition of methanol ratio 10, reaction time 2 h and catalyst amount 8 %. The reaction time was found to be the most effective operating condition. Kinetics study of the process showed that first order reaction with triglyceride concentration and zero order with methanol concentration gave best fit with the experimental data, triglyceride with a reaction rate constant k= 1.53 h-1.