Scope of Non-Edible Vegetable Oils

Scope of Non-Edible Vegetable Oils

Present Scenario and Need for Research

    • 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...