Performance Evaluation of Palm Oil as Biodiesel

Abstract

This work involved the production of diesel from most commonly available palm fruits oil Pisifera elaeis guineensis and testing for the brake power, torque of an engine and specific fuel consumption of a conventional diesel engine utilizing the produced diesel from palm oil. The obtained results were compared with those for fossil diesel fuel. The results show that the value of brake power was 6927.21W for fossil diesel while that of biodiesel was 7135.02W. Similarly the value for brake torque for fossil diesel was 44.1Nm and that of biodiesel was 45.42Nm. The average value obtained for the specific fuel consumption in the three experiments conducted for fossil diesel and biodiesel were 69.09 and 129.21 l/kWh respectively. It was discovered that the values of brake power, torque power and specific fuel consumption for bio diesel fuel were higher than those of fossil diesel fuel