• Increasing industrialization, limited reserve from the fossil fuels.
• Upcoming technological sectors have growing energy demands.
• Oil is the engine of today’s economic growth and economists predict that the oil prices will continue to rise exponentially.
• With view to this some countries like Brazil, France, etc. have made headway in using ethanol alternatively to petroleum products.
• These factors bring about the need for research in the field of alternative fuels.
Objective of the Article
• With an effort to finding alternate fuels non-edible plant oils have come into picture.
• According to preliminary studies, plant oils can be a good replacement to petroleum oil.
• Amongst all plant oils, jatropha oil attracts many research initiatives due to its properties being similar to diesel and better combustion characteristics.
• Here we have made an attempt to find the suitability of plant oils to substitute petroleum oils with jatropha oil as the governing fuel.
• In this paper we have made a brief summary of the scope of jatropha oil in thermal applications.
Properties of plant oils and petroleum
• Plant oils have different chemical and physical properties in comparison to petroleum.
• They mainly contain glycerides of fatty acids, which differ according to species and variety.
• As this influences the burning characteristics, the design of oil burning appliances has to be changed accordingly.
• The gross calorific values of plant oils are comparable to that of petroleum.
• The ignition point for petroleum oil is about 50 C whereas for plant oils it ranges from 250 to 350 C.
|Physical Properties of Jatropha Oil |
|Specific Gravity |0.9186...
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