Performance Analysis of Producer Gas Based Diesel Engine

Producer gas is one out of the alternative fuels used in internal combustion engines. Conventionally, it is made by flowing air and steam through a thick coal or coke bed which ranges in temperature from red hot to low temperature. The oxygen in air burns the carbon to CO2. This CO2 gets reduced to CO by contacting with carbon above the combustion zone. The freed oxygen combines with carbon and steam gets dissociated which introduces hydrogen. Producer gas has a high percentage of nitrogen since air is used [1]. Thus, in the present work a gasifier is designed and developed which could gasify any form of biomass. In the present work waste wood chips, bagasse, rice husk, and eucalyptus, etc are used for gasification in a fabricated updraft gasifier to produce producer gas. The producer gas obtained from the developed gasifier is sent along with air into a diesel engine with diesel as the primary fuel and the performance characteristics ie brake thermal efficiency, exhaust gas temperature and brake specific energy consumption of the engine are studied along with economic analysis with and without aid of producer gas.