Renewable Energy 36 (2011) 2635e2640

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Renewable Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/renene

Alternative fuel for gas turbine: Esteried jatropha oilediesel blend

A. Rehman a, *, Deepak R. Phalke b, Rajesh Pandey a
a b

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, Bhopal, M.P. 462051, India RDCT, Indore, M.P., India

a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history: Received 27 March 2010 Accepted 9 June 2010 Available online 10 July 2010 Keywords: Biodiesel Biofuels Jatropha Gas turbines Emissions

a b s t r a c t
The oil crisis and the global effort to control the greenhouse effect have forced the researchers to think of various alternative energy sources. This decade has seen increasing importance of chemically treated vegetable oil biodiesel fuels for various applications in heat engines. Post-Kyoto negotiations refer to high level talks attempting to address global warming by limiting greenhouse gas emissions. During Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen the potential topics discussed were carbon capture and storage, biofuels, adaptation nancing, technology transfer, sustainable agriculture, emissions targets, tropical forests and rural and transport electrication. Our area of interest is biofuels under which nonedible Jatropha oil due to its properties which are very close to diesel fuel is being explored as an alternative fuel. A lot of research is underway in the use of different biodiesel fuels in Internal Combustion engines, but very limited work has been reported in its use in gas turbines. This paper describes the results of an ongoing development program aimed at determining the technical feasibility of utilizing biodiesel in IS/ 60 Rovers gas turbine. The test rig is equipped with a dynamometer for turbine loading and AVL exhaust gas analyzer has been used to record emissions. The test results of 2 blends have been reported in this paper. Analyzing the results compared with the base line performance using diesel fuel under normal conditions show encouraging outcomes. 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction During the last decade a lot of work has been undertaken to explore the feasibility and viability of using biofuels in different applications [1]. In the recently concluded Copenhagen December 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference the world leaders and researchers mainly discussed issues related to biofuels, sustainable agriculture, emissions targets, production of carbon dioxide and global warming [2e4]. Role of developed countries and their demand for more energy was a point of great concern so that they may shoulder the responsibility of preventing any further environmental degradation. Much can be done to prevent this loss, like using biodiesel fuels which have lower carbon dioxide percentage on combustion as compared to diesel. Efcient use of fuel is another area of importance for researchers to prevent environmental degradation and delay exhaustion of the fossil fuels. Sufcient level of research in the area of biodiesel as fuel for Internal Combustion Engines has been done [5e10] as compared to its use in Gas Turbines. There is an increasing amount of

* Corresponding author. Tel.: 91 755 3016386; fax: 91 755 5206006. E-mail addresses: manit1963@yahoo.com (A. Rehman), rkpmanit@gmail.com (R. Pandey). 0960-1481/$ e see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.renene.2010.06.013

literature on gas turbine covering other aspects such as: design, combustion, heat transfer, performance, materials (super alloys, coating); applications (propulsion; power generation, mechanical drive; traction); process control. Reported work on gas turbine and specially related to power generation application usually mentions natural gas and gas oil but they virtually ignore other alternate fuel. Research and investigations on alternative biofuels for the gas turbines along with the effect of varying turbine inlet conditions is a very important area of work [10e13]. India is one among the largest petroleum consuming nations with its current yearly consumption of diesel oil touching 40 million tones which is about 40% of the total petroleum product consumption [1]. India and all developing countries of the world need to explore this area with conviction in a planned manner. A dangerous effect of burning fuel emissions on environment is a fact which cannot be left in the research. Gas turbine and Internal Combustion engines running on diesel are a major contributor to air pollution especially within cities and along urban trafc routes. Biodiesel can be one of the alternative renewable energy sources for gas turbine. As the properties of biodiesel closely match with the diesel fuel properties, so it can be used as one of the alternative fuels which is of comparable cost and produce less emissions [5e15].

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A. Rehman et al. / Renewable Energy 36 (2011) 2635e2640 Table 2 Specications of IS/60 rovers gas turbine. Part of test rig Details Centrifugal Single stage axial Reverse ow 46,000 rpm. 2.8/1 44 kW at 3000 rpm

Nomenclature d b1 b2 bsfc CO HC NOx diesel fuel tested under normal inlet conditions fuel blend of 15% biodiesel in 85% diesel fuel fuel blend of 25% biodiesel in 75% diesel fuel brake specic fuel consumption carbon monoxide hydrocarbons oxide of nitrogen

Compressor Turbine Combustion Chamber Turbine Speed Pressure Ratio Max BP at 46,000 rpm

1.1. Biodiesel and related problems Many problems are encountered during the use of plain vegetable oil as fuel in diesel engines and gas turbines. Higher viscosity of plain vegetable oils interferes with the fuel atomization. This in turn affects combustion, makes cold starting difcult, clogs the nozzle, and contaminates lubricating oil. Poor volatility makes plain vegetable oil difcult to vaporize and ignite this also results in thermal cracking which in turn leads to heavy smoke emissions and carbon deposits in the combustion chamber. The problem of high viscosity can be overcome to a great extent by various techniques, such as heating, dilution, emulsication and esterication [6e8]. 1.2. The effect of water and steam There are several reasons why water may be present in the air used by a gas turbine engine such as ambient humidity and water or steam injection. The above are additional to the water vapor produced by combustion. The amount of water and carbon dioxide produced are based on fuel properties and fueleair ratio, accounted in performance calculations via modied gas properties. The presence of any additional water beyond that produced by combustion affects performance [10e12]. 1.3. Biodiesel (jatropha) availability Jatropha plant has medicinal and industrial use and can be planted on a large scale and great prot can be earned from its plantation. In India various states have sufcient forest area for the plantation of jatropha [1,6,8]. 2. Material and methods Jatropha oil was chemically treated to modify oil properties by way of transesterication. After transesterication process the vegetable oil esters are referred to as biodiesel. Since most vegetable oils and diesel oils are miscible, blends of esters of vegetable oil and diesel oil were prepared. Blending up to 30% of jatropha oil biodiesel in diesel show good test results on diesel engine as that

Table 3 List of instruments and range, accuracy and percentage uncertainties. Sr. no 1 Instruments Gas analyzer Range NOx 0e500 ppm HC CO CO2 Opacity % 0e900  C 0e10000 ppm 0e100 kg e e e 0e110 bar e Accuracy 10 ppm 1 ppm 0.01% 0.03% 0.2 1  C 10 rpm 0.1 kg 0.2 cm2 0.2 s 1 mm 1 bar 1 Percentage uncertainties 0.9 0.1 0.3 0.15 0.28 0.15 0.66 0.2 2.0 0.2 1.0 0.1 0.2

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Smoke level measuring instrument EGT indicator Speed measuring unit Load indicator Burette for fuel measurement Digital stop watch Manometer Pressure pick up Encoder

obtained with diesel fuel. Two blends were prepared for testing the biodiesel in gas turbine, blend 1 e b1: with 15% biodiesel and 85% diesel and blend 2 e b2: with 25% biodiesel and 75% diesel. Properties of diesel, jatropha, ester and their blends b1, b2 evaluated for comparison with diesel and reported in Table 1.Rover gas turbine IS/60 test rig has been used for testing the performance with diesel and biodiesel. It is a single stage turbine with maximum 44 kW brake power at rated conditions. Table 2 gives brief specications of the Gas Turbine. The tests were conducted at temperatures between 28  C and 35  C. AVL exhaust gas analyzer was used to record emissions under all test conditions. The tests were conducted at speed of about 1500 revolutions per minute on the output shaft. Fuel ow meter which is part of the test rig was used to note the fuel consumption. Hydraulic dynamometer, Heenan Froude make, was used to observe the turbine load variations. Exhaust gas temperature was regularly monitored. 2.1. Error analysis Although, all efforts have been made to minimize the errors in experimentation, yet some errors are likely to creep in depending

Table 1 Comparison of evaluated properties of diesel, jatropha, ester and blends b1, b2. Sr. no 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Properties Density gm/cc 15  C Viscosity cSt Caloric value MJ/g Flash point  C Fire point  C Cloud point  C Pour point Carbon residue wt% Sulphur content % Saponication no. mg KOH/gm oil ASTM test method D D D D D D D D 4052 445 240 93 2500 97 524 129 e Diesel oil 0.852 3.38 43963 67 73 6 12 0.28 0.032 e Jatropha oil 0.910 30 39.4 240 244 7 4 2.41 0.006 191 Jatropha oil methyl ester 0.884 5.42 39.89 171 175 1 3 1.49 0.003 186 Blend e b 1 0.856 3.68 42.29 82.6 88.3 5.1 10.2 0.461 0.272 e Blend e b2 0.86 3.89 42.89 6 106 4.7 9 0.58 0.24 e

A. Rehman et al. / Renewable Energy 36 (2011) 2635e2640 Table 4 List of instruments used for measuring various parameters and measurement techniques. Instrument Exhaust gas analyzer Purpose Measurement of HC, CO, CO2 and NOx emissions Make and model AVL 444 DiGas analyzer Measurement techniques NDIR principle (non-depressive infra red sensor) NOx electrochemical sensor

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Measurement of AVL 434 Smoke smoke emissions analyzer EGT 2 indicator Measurement of exhaust gas temperature Speed measuring Measurement of unit engine speed Encoder Load indicator Loading device BENZ

Smoke meter

k-Type(Cr Al) thermocouple Magnetic pick up Magnetic pick up type Strain gauge type load cell

Table 5 List of instruments and range, accuracy and percentage uncertainties. Sr. no 1 Instruments Gas analyzer Range NOx 0e5000 ppm HC CO CO2 BSN 0e10 0e900  C 0e10,000 ppm 0e100 kg e e e 0e110 bar e Accuracy 20 ppm 15 ppm 0.02% 0.03% 0.2 1  C 10 rpm 0.1 kg 0.2 cm2 0.2 s 1 mm 1 bar 1 Percentage uncertainties 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.15 1.0 0.15 1.0 0.2 1.5 0.2 1.0 0.1 0.2 Fig. 2. Effect of brake load on CO emissions with diesel and biodiesel blends.

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Smoke level measuring instrument EGT indicator Speed measuring unit Load indicator Burette for fuel measurement Digital stop watch Manometer Pressure pick up Encoder

dR=R dX1 =X1

(1)

If result R of the experiment is assumed to be calculated from a set of measurements using a data interpretation programme represented by
a b c n R X1 ; X2 ; X3 .XN

(2)

Then the relative uncertainty can be found as:

dR=R fadX1 =X1 g2 fbdX2 =X2 g2 .fndXN =XN g2

i1=2

upon the accuracy of the instruments used for various measurements. In order to determine the extent of this uncertainty, an uncertainty analysis has been carried out. Effect of uncertainty in case of the single measurement can be calculated as:

The uncertainties of the measurements are described in percentage. The possible uncertainties in the derived results were examined before the start of the experimental works, which helped in the selection of the instruments for experiments and reported in Tables 3e5.

Fig. 1. Effect of brake load on brake specic fuel consumption with diesel and biodiesel blends.

Fig. 3. Effect of brake load on HC emissions with diesel and biodiesel blends.

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Total percentage uncertainty of this experiment is Square root of uncertainty of TFC2 uncertainty of BP2 uncertainty of BSFC2 uncertainty of brake thermal efficiency2 uncertainty of CO2 uncertainty of UBHC2 uncertainty of NOx 2 1:41%2 0:50%2 1:5%2 0:6%2 0:3%2 1%2 0:9%2 2:59%

3. Results and discussion The various tests performed with two biodiesel blends used in the present work were carried out under ambient inlet conditions. Table 2 gives the details of the test rig used in the present work. Also Figs. 5e8 at the end of the paper give the view of the gas turbine used in the present work. 3.1. Effect of brake load on brake specic fuel consumption Fig. 1 shows that bsfc for b1 and b2 is higher than that of diesel. The higher fuel consumption per unit power produced can be attributed to lower caloric value of the blends. As reported by various researchers the brake specic fuel consumption is 5e8% higher than that of diesel and improves at higher power output [5,14,15]. Further the gure shows us that at lower loads the bsfc with biodiesel blends is higher. However, bsfc for b1 and b2 reduced marginally below that obtained with diesel for medium loads. This can be attributed to higher oxygen content of the fuel which supports combustion but also marginally increases blendeair mixture temperature.
Fig. 4. Effect of brake load on NOx emissions from diesel and biodiesel blends.

3.2. Effect of brake load on CO emissions As evident from Fig. 2 the CO emissions from different blends of biodiesel are lower then diesel. This can be due to higher oxygen content of jatropha oil which improves combustion. Biodiesel contains 10e12% oxygen on weight basis which lowers the energy content of the fuel. However, lower energy content of the blends cause reduction in engine torque and power. Better combustion

Fig. 5. The schematic of gas turbine test set-up.

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Fig. 8. The compressor impellor and the turbine blades.

Fig. 6. The sectional details of gas turbine.

obtained with diesel fuel are lower due to higher fuel oxygen content of biodiesel as compared to diesel resulting in better combustion. Also the HC emissions with b2 are lower than that with b1 again due to the same reason related to oxygen in fuel. 3.4. Effect of brake load on NOx emissions NOx emissions are the major source of pollution from any gas turbine. NOx emissions mainly depend on temperature and oxygen available at that temperature. However, fuel properties, engine load, engine type, airefuel mixture ratio and time affect NOx formation indirectly [13,16,17]. In the present case the higher NOx emissions may be mainly due to higher temperature in the combustion zones of the chamber [13,16]. Further, NOx emissions are due to three mechanisms involved during combustion and they are thermal NO, Fuel NO and prompt NO [17]. In the present alternative fuel rst two mechanisms are mainly responsible for the formation of higher NOx emissions. From Fig. 4 it is evident that NOx emissions for b1 and b2 are higher than that obtained with diesel fuel. Higher combustion temperatures were observed due to better combustion on account of higher oxygen in biodiesel fuel as compared to diesel. Higher temperature factor is mainly responsible for higher NOx with biodiesel blend. Further, the cetane number for the biodiesel is higher than diesel which may also be another reason for higher NOx emissions. NOx emission for b2 is higher than that of b1 which can again be attributed to the same reasons already discussed related to higher cycle temperature achieved during combustion. 4. Conclusions Based on the experimental results following conclusions are drawn. 1. Jatropha oil has characteristics properties very close to diesel oil. However the viscosity is higher which can be reduced by degumming/esterication of Jatropha oil to form its biodiesel fuel. 2. Esteried Jatropha oil is miscible with diesel fuel in any proportion and can be used as diesel fuel extenders.

reduces products of incomplete combustion [16,17]. Again the emissions from b2 are lower than that of b1 which may be due to the same reason related to more oxygen content in b2 than in b1 [5,6,15]. 3.3. Effect of brake load on HC emissions In Fig. 3 it can be seen that the effect of load/brake power on HC emissions with diesel compared with different blends of biodiesel are higher. Emissions of HC for b1 and b2 as compare to that

Fig. 7. The end view of the turbine showing turbine blades; picture taken when the modications were done for water injection etc.

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3. Biodiesel blend of Jatropha oil with diesel oil can be one of the alternate fuels, for gas turbine application. 4. India is Agriculture-based country, large portion of its waste and unfertile land can be used for growing jatropha plant. This would provide jatropha oil for biodiesel production, which will act as future fuel for gas turbines. 5. Transesterication process can reduce the viscosity of jatropha oil to a substantial level and allow it to be used in gas turbine. It also reduces the specic gravity from 0.917 to 0.881 at 15  C. 6. The Caloric value of Jatropha oil is found to be lower in the range 7e9% due to the difference in chemical composition and the difference of carbonehydrogen content. 7. Experimental results show the fuel consumption of various blends are initially higher at lower loads due to higher specic gravity, low volatility, high viscosity but improves as the combustion proceed due to decrease in viscosity. 8. Initially at lower loads the brake specic fuel consumption is higher for the blends due to lower caloric value and high density & viscosity. The bsfc marginally reduced at a point by about 4% as the viscosity reduced with the increase in cycle temperature at higher loads. 9. Carbon monoxide and Hydrocarbon emissions from the exhaust of turbine for b1 and b2 are lower than that obtained with diesel fuel. It may be due to better combustion with oxygenated blends of biodiesel fuel, which can be predicted from high exhaust temperature as compared to that obtained with diesel. 10. NOx emission from b1 and b2 are higher than diesel due to better combustion resulting in higher cycle temperature. As NOx emissions are temperature dependant and are higher at high temperature. 11. Above results indicate jatropha can be one of the alternate fuel for gas turbine. Its cost is comparable based on its level of production and oil extraction technology.

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