Life Cycle Analysis of CI Engine Using Modified Piston Ring Design and Selective Coating

Abstract

The scarcity of known petroleum reserves, growths in prices of petroleum based fuels and environmental pollution are major issues in world today. The exhaust created by engine emissions have heartened studies to search for unconventional fuels. Biodiesel derived from vegetable oil is an unconventional diesel fuel and it has remained the focus of extensive amount of recent research since it is renewable and reduces the emission of some pollutants. The appeal of evolving bio-diesel from different tree borne oil seeds and declining the need on petroleum based fuels has been discussed by several over the past few years. Though some of the significant issues like compatibility of bio-diesel with the crankcase lubricating oil, changes in dimensions of various parts of engine, presence of coatings and surface topology have not been adequately inspected. In future, bio diesel will be used with diesel in engines so how these coatings and different geometries of engine parts will affect the wear of these type of engines will remain the focus of research. In the present work, with an overall objective of life cycle analysis, a long run endurance test is carried out on CI engine. A single cylinder, four stroke, water-cooled, multi fuel CI engine was run for 256 hours with optimized blend of diesel, bio-diesel and Di-ethyl ether (B20A4) and with proposed trapezoidal piston ring profile and selective gas nitriding coating on piston ring . The endurance tests are directed as per ISO 10000 part IX. The ferrography analysis of lubricating oil was carried out after each intervals of 128 hours. Along with this weight and dimension measurements was also done on engine components to detect the amount of wear. The results of these analyses are compared with the results of previous year experiment.