Spray angle characteristics of carotino-diesel blends.

Carotino is a blend of 80% red palm oil and 20% canola oil. Palm oil is very useful in so many ways and one of the usefulness is that palm oil can be converted into biofuel for engine use. Thus, it is important to know the spray characteristics of the blends of carotino and petroleum diesel as it affects so much during the combustion in engine. The physical properties of carotino and petroleum diesel in terms of surface tension, density, kinematic viscosity and specific gravity are different for every blend. In addition, these properties will affect the spray droplet size and droplet size measurement values. Thus, it is important to determine these values so that accurate and precise spray characteristics could be obtained. The main purpose of this study is to determine the spray characteristics of carotino-diesel blends experimentally. The Carotino oil was blended with petroleum diesel for five different blends which are B5, B10, B15, B20, and B25. For the spray cone angle experiment, digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) camera was used to capture the image of the spray at different pressures which are 8 bar, 10 bar and 12 bar for each blends. The images then been analyzed by using Solid-Work software in order to get the values of the cone angle. The results show that the spray cone angle becomes wider as the pressure increase. In terms of blends, it becomes smaller as the blends were increased from B0 to B10, B15, B20, and B25. As for the droplet size measurement, the values of SMD for each blend were calculated using empirical equations from previous case studies. The results show that as pressure increases, the SMD values become smaller but as the blends increases from B0 to B25, the SMD values increase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]