Biodiesel has been immersed as an immediate alternative of fossil fuels for diesel engines. However, choosing a good combination of biodiesel blends based on both performance and emission depend on various factors. The chapter presents the modeling and optimization of performance and emissions parameters of a biodiesel-run diesel engine using an integrated MCDM approach. The integrated MCDM approach consists of entropy with MCRA method. An experimental case study on performance and emission study of diesel engine is considered to show the modeling capability of the proposed method. The results show that trail no. 4 yields the optimal setting compare to the other combinations. The trail no. 4 gives optimum operating condition such as 85-90% load and PB10 which provides optimum performance parameters like higher brake thermal efficiency (BTE), lower brake-specific energy consumption (BSEC), lower carbon monoxide (CO), lower hydro carbon (HC), and lower oxides of nitrogen (NOx), respectively.
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Natural resources play a significant role in the field of science and technology. But with the increase in population and advancement in technology, the requirement for these natural resources is also expanded day by day. Some of the natural resources are fossil fuels, air, wind, water, sunlight etc. Unfortunately, it has been forecast by the experts that by 2050 the availability of fossil fuels will diminish due to their increase in consumption rate which is 105 faster than their natural production (Satyanarayana et al., 2011). Among the fossil fuels, diesel is in high demand in the transportation sector, agricultural sector, domestic sector and industrial sector, to meet the high demand for power over petrol or Spark Ignition (SI) engines. Since largest section of our transportation needs is met by diesel engines, substitution of even a small fraction of diesel fuel needs by alternative fuels is very important in the present context. The diesel engine release harmful emissions like carbon monoxide (CO), hydrocarbon (HC), carbon-di-oxide (CO2), soot, particulate matter (PM), oxides of nitrogen (NOx), and formaldehyde etc., which causes serious health issue to the living beings and ecological imbalance. Though, diesel engines are mostly preferred over SI engine because of higher thermal efficiencies, lower consumption of fuel, high compression ratio, utilization of better air-fuel mixtures, reliability, low operating and maintenance cost, lesser CO and HC emissions, but, NOx and PM are greater for diesel engines, respectively. In order to control these pollutants and to compensate for the increasing demand of diesel fuel presently the researchers focus on clean alternative fuels (i.e., biodiesel) those are locally available, environmentally acceptable and technically feasible have become a topic on the global agenda. Generally, biodiesel produced through transesterification process from various vegetable oil and animal fats as feedstocks in presence of homogeneous catalysts (NaOH and KOH). Biodiesel is the better selection as an alternative fuel because it is biodegradable, nontoxic, good lubricant properties, similar properties to that of diesel, reduces the environmental pollution with no sulphur compounds during combustion and so forth (Lin et al., 2011; Kannan &Anand, 2012; Arbab et al., 2013; Rahman et al., 2013; Agarwal & Das, 2010).