International Conference on Recent Advances in Mechanical Engineering and Interdisciplinary Developments [ICRAMID - 2014]

Design and Development of Electronic Fuel

Injection System for Vegetable Methyl Ester
Operated DI CI Engine
Senthil R
Paramasivam C
Silambarasan R
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering,
University College of Engineering
University College of Engineering
University College of Engineering
Villupuram, Tamilnadu, India.
Villupuram, Tamilnadu, India.
Villupuram, Tamilnadu, India.
drrs1970@gmail.com
paramasivam1507@gmail.com
simbu2explore@gmail.com

Abstract The methyl esters of vegetable oils known as

biodiesel are fetching more and more attraction because of the
low environmental impact and potential as a green alternative
fuel for diesel engine and they would not require significant
modification of existing engine. Methyl esters of Jatropha
(JME) are derived through transesterification process.
Experimental investigations have been carried out to examine
properties, performance and emission of different blends of
JME. Result indicated that B20 have closer performance to
diesel. The use of these methyl esters gives lower smoke, CO
and HC but the Nitrogen Oxide emission is more.
However to reduce the Nitrogen Oxide emission in diesel
and various vegetable oil esters by lowering the combustion
chamber temperature, Electronic fuel injection method is
adopted. The study was carried out in a single cylinder 8 H.P
running at 1800 rpm using the diesel, JME by the method of
normal and Electronic Fuel Injection system and the result
are compared between them. The result indicates that the
Nitrogen Oxide emission is less for Electronic fuel injection
method than the single injection. This helps to lower the
combustion chamber temperature considerably, and hence the
chance of generating the Nitrogen Oxide is minimized
compared to the single injection.
Key words: Performance,emission,EFI,JME,Diesel.

I. INT RODUCT ION

OSSIL fuels like petroleum, diesel fuel is highly demanded,

rapid depletion of fossil fuels had resulted in increasing

cost of fuel. These reasons attracted more research in the
area of alternate fuels for diesel engine. It has been found
that vegetable oils hold special promise in this regard, since
they can be produced from the plants. Vegetable oil from
crops such as soybean, peanut, sunflower, Jatropha, mahua,

ISBN 978-93-80609-17-1
225

neem, rape, coconut, karanja, cotton, mustard, linseed and

castor have been tried in many parts of the world. The long
chain hydrocarbon structure, vegetable oils have good
ignition characteristics. However they cause serious
problems such as carbon deposits buildup, poor durability,
high density, high viscosity, lower calorific value and more
molecular weight.
Biodiesel is produced by Transesterification of vegetable
oils and which can be directly used in compression ignition
engines with no significant modifications in the engine.
Biodiesel does not contains sulphur and therefore this is the
important point in terms of future Emission regulations. A
single cylinder, 4 stroke, direct injection diesel engine has
been used to measure the general performance of biodiesel
and traditional Diesel. The increased lubricity of biodiesel is
a benefit to fuel pumps and overall engine wear. The
uncertainty lies with the formation of hard deposits that may
form on fuel injector tips and piston rings. This phenomenon
has been noted in several studies, and is highly dependent
on the engine, biodiesel feedstock and production method.
In the present work and JME is selected based upon the
oxygen content, flash point, solubility in diesel fuel and
stability and fuel properties such as viscosity, cetane
number, flashpoint, fire point and calorific value. But
however the Nitrogen oxide emission is more for JME and to
reduce that the Electronic fuel injection method is introduced
compared to normal injection.
But however to reduce the Nitrogen oxide emission in
diesel and various vegetable oil esters by lowering the
combustion chamber temperature, the Electronic fuel
injection method is adopted. This helps to lower the
combustion chamber temperature considerably, and hence
the chance of generating the Nitrogen oxide is minimized
compared to the normal injection.
Electronic gaseous fuel injectors provide accurate and
stable metering of hydrogen fuel at required pressure. The
precise metering of fuel is critical for the performance

International Conference on Recent Advances in Mechanical Engineering and Interdisciplinary Developments [ICRAMID - 2014]

hydrogen powered engines [1]-[4]. The development of a pc

based system which simulates an electronic fuel injection
control unit. It also aims at replace a whole set of manual
simulators for fuel injection with just one single system [5][8]. It is very clear that the use of various vegetable oils in CI
engine will help to reduce CO, HC and smoke emission [9].
II. TRANSESTERIFICATION OF VEGETABLE OILS
Transesterification is the process of reacting Fatty acids of
vegetable oils with alcohol (e.g. methanol or ethanol) in the
presence of catalyst such as sodium hydroxide (NaOH) or
potassium hydroxide (KOH), this reaction will chemically
breaks the fatty acids of the raw vegetable oil into methyl or
ethyl esters with glycerol as a by-product, which reduces the
high viscosity of oils. This method also reduces the
molecular weight of the oil to 1/3 of its original value, and
reduces the viscosity, and increase the volatility and cetane
number to levels comparable to diesel fuel. Conversion not
greatly affects the gross heat of combustion.
III. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
The schematic diagram of the engine test rig used is
shown in fig.1. The engine is fully equipped with
measurements of all operating parameters. The arrangement
requires the following systems and apparatus for carrying
out the desired experiment
Diesel engine
Prony brake dynamometer
Exhaust gas analyzer
Smoke meter

A. Specifications of the apparatus:

In the test rig there are several instruments/ equipment
have been used for the purpose of the experiment. Brief
specifications of the instruments are given below.
1) Diesel engine:
Bore diameter : 88mm
Stroke length
: 110 mm
Cooling
: water cooling
Engine RPM
: 1800
Max. power
: 8 BHP
Specific fuel consumption : 251 g/kW.hr
Engine used
: 4 stroke single cylinder direct injection
IV. ELECTRONIC FUEL INJECTION SYSTEM
A. Methods of fuel injection system
The two important methods of fuel injection systems as
follows
1) Continuous fuel injection system
In this system, fuel is sprayed at low pressure
continuously in the air supply that has advantage of fuel
promoting efficient atomization of fuel. The amount of fuel is
governed by air throttle opening and no timing is used in
addition the evaporative effects of fuel cools the compressed
charge and gives the higher volumetric efficiency. The
method requires only one fuel injection pump and one
injector.
2) Timed injection system
The timed injection system is similar to continuous fuel
injection system, which is used in high speed diesel engines.
Fuel is injected during the injection stroke over limited
period. The injection of fuel into combustion chamber can be
done by employing any of these following methods:
1. Direct injection of fuel into the cylinder
2. Injection of fuel close to the inlet valve
3. Injection of fuel into the inlet manifold
The electronic fuel injection kit made for this research is
timed injection system that is direct injection of fuel into the
cylinder.
B. Block diagram of electronic fuel injection system:
This system consists of electronic fuel injector, rotary fuel
pump, fuel tank, filter, microcontroller, crank shaft position
sensor and pump driver.

Fig.1. Experimental setup

The test rig used for the present has been developed in
the dynamometer laboratory of the Madras Institute of
Technology, Chennai. The test engine and Prony brake
dynamometer are mounted on channels which are embedded
on concrete foundation.
A smoke meter is used to determine the smoke density of
the engine exhaust. A gas analyzer is used to measure the
exhaust gas composition. The exhaust gas temperatures are
measured with the help of K type thermocouple. The line
diagram of test rig on which experiment was carried out has
shown in figure.

ISBN 978-93-80609-17-1
226

International Conference on Recent Advances in Mechanical Engineering and Interdisciplinary Developments [ICRAMID - 2014]

sample and hold (S/H) circuit. The ADC output is a sequence

in binary digit.
C. IR Detector:

Fig.2. Block diagram of EFI

The fuel pump will pressurize the low pressure fuel tank
and supplies it to the fuel injector. The fuel injector is
controlled by the microcontroller. The position of crank shaft
is determined by a position sensor. with the help of this data;
the microcontroller will give control signal to operate the fuel
injector at the correct position for every cycle. The length of
pulse determines the quantity of fuel delivered.
C. Optical crankshaft position sensor:
This sensor will identify the exact position of the
crankshaft and transfer the position details to the
microcontroller.
D. Fuel feed pump:
The rotary type fuel pump is used for electronic fuel
injection system. Its delivery pressure is 7 bar, with a help of
pressure regulator a constant pressure of 3 bar is achieved.

Operation: The IR (infrared) detector consists of infrared IR

transmitter IR receiver and comparator IC 741. The light from
the IR rays is directly falls on the IR receiver, which in turn is
given as input to the IC 741 which is used as comparator.
Comparator is a circuit which compares two voltages
(reference voltage and input voltage) and produce outpu t
according to the input. The output of the comparator is given
to a transistor which will act as an inverter and drive a LED
and also given as input to the micro controller. When the
output of the comparator is logic one the transistor will be
turned ON and the LED will glow. The reverse process will
takes place if comparator output is zero.
If IR light falls directly on the IR receiver the output of the
comparator will be logic zero and it will be logic one if
interrupted. The micro controller will keep track of the signal
to identify the input.
D. Relay circuit:
The microcontroller output is only 5V DC, signal which is
not enough to energize the 12V DC therefore an external relay
is to be used for actuating the injector. The simple NPN
transistor buffer, diode and a current limiting resistor are
required for interfacing the relay to the microcontroller
output port. The relay is connected to be across the diode.
There are two types of relays
1. Mechanical relay
2. Solid state relay
The control circuits for both the relay is electrical isolated
from the actual switch. The mechanical relay cannot be
worked for very small pulse duration in the milliseconds. This
can be overcome by using solid state relay.

V. HARDWARE INTERFACING
A. Interfacing circuits:
The microcontroller cannot be directly connected to the
respective inputs and output ports, an interfacing circuit
should be designed in order not to affect the performance of
the systems. Since the microcontroller is to be operating 5V
DC supply, all the inputs given to the system and the
outputs taken from the system should be with this operating
range.
B. A-D converter:
A-D converter means analog to digital converter. It is
often required that data taken in a physical system be
converted into digital form. Such data would normally appear
in electrical analog form. The need therefore arises for a
device that lot converts analog information into digital form.
The analog signal obtained from the crank shaft position
sensor is band limited by ant aliasing filter. The signal is then
at a frequency rate more than twice the maximum frequency
of the band signals. The sampled signal has to be held
constant while conversion is taking place in the A-D
converter. This requires that ADC should be preceded by a

ISBN 978-93-80609-17-1
227

VI. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

A. Performance characteristics comparison for Diesel,
Diesel-EFI, JME 20 and JME 20-EFI
1) Total energy consumption (TEC)
The figure 5 clearly shows that on increasing BP, TEC also
increases.

International Conference on Recent Advances in Mechanical Engineering and Interdisciplinary Developments [ICRAMID - 2014]

It is very clear from the figure that as a percentage of blends

is increasing there is decreasing in the thermal efficiency and
also JME 20 is closer to diesel. This may due to poor mixture
formation because of low volatility higher viscosity and
density of JME.

Fig.3 Brake power vs TEC

When compared to JME, JME-EFI shows the decreased
TEC, this may be due to complete combustion.
The total energy consumption of engine was high for JME
20. In the case of Jatropha biodiesel alone, the fuel
consumption was about 12 per cent higher than that of
diesel. This may be due to higher specific gravity and lower
calorific value of the biodiesel fuel as compared with diesel
fuel. The calorific value of the Jatropha biodiesel was about 8
per cent lower than that of diesel fuel.
2) Specific energy consumption (SEC)
The figure 6 indicates that specific energy consumption is
more for Jatropha followed by diesel and also this may be
due to complete combustion and also excess oxygen, high
specific gravity, lower CV compared to diesel.

Fig.5 Brake power vs BTE

B. Emission characteristics comparison for Diesel, DieselEFI, JME 20 and JME 20-EFI
1) Carbon monoxide (CO)
The figure 8 indicates that carbon monoxide is less for JME
20-EFI than JME 20, Diesel, Diesel-EFI. The 10% of oxygen
molecules present in the biodiesel, will leads to complete
combustion, which in turns helps in reduction of CO.

Fig.6 Brake power vs CO

Fig.4 Brake power vs SEC
The specific energy consumption for JME 20, JME 20-EFI,
is slightly high when compared to diesel at normal injection
timing. This may be due to poor spray characteristics, lower
calorific value, high density and viscosity of the blended
fuel. The high viscosity of the blended fuels inhibits the
proper atomization, fuel vaporization and combustion.
3) Brake thermal efficiency (BTE)
Figure 7 shows the variation of brake thermal efficiency with
brake power for diesel, diesel-EFI, JME 20, JME 20-EFI. The
brake thermal efficiency indicates the ability of the
combustion system to accept the experimental fuel and
provides comparable means of assessing how efficiently the
energy in the fuel was converted into mechanical output.

ISBN 978-93-80609-17-1
228

Compare the carbon monoxide (CO) emission of biodiesel

fuels with diesel at various powers. This is one of the
compounds formed during the intermediate combustion
stages of hydrocarbon fuels. As combustion proceeds to
completion, oxidation of CO to CO2 occurs through
recombination reactions between CO and oxidants. If these
recombination reactions are incomplete due to lack of
oxidants or due to low gas temperatures, CO will be left
without conversion into CO2.
2) Carbon di-oxide (CO2)
The figure 9 indicates that as the percentage of blend is
increasing and there is a decreasing carbondioxide emission
due to complete combustion.
Figure shows the variation carbon dioxide (CO2) emission in
percentage by volume with brake power for diesel, diesel-EFI,
JME 20, JME 20-EFI. The CO2 emission increase with an

International Conference on Recent Advances in Mechanical Engineering and Interdisciplinary Developments [ICRAMID - 2014]

increase in brake power; it indicates the efficiency of

combustion chamber. This is because biodiesel is generally a
low carbon fuel and has a lower elemental carbon to
hydrogen ratio than diesel fuel.

The figure 11 indicates that when the brake power is

increasing HC emission is also increasing due to poor
atomization and lower viscosity.The variation of unburned
hydrocarbon emissions with respect to brake power is shown
in figure for diesel, diesel-EFI, JME 20 and JME 20-EFI.For all
the blends, the amount of HC emissions was lower in partial
load, but increases at higher load. This is due to the
availability of relatively less oxygen for the reaction when
more fuel is injected into the cylinder at higher load.
VII. CONCLUSION

Fig.7 Brake power vs CO2

3) Oxides of nitrogen (NOx)
The oxides of nitrogen in the exhaust emission contain nitric
oxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2)is shown in figure 10.
The formation of NOx is highly dependent on in-cylinder
temperature, oxygen concentration in the cylinder and also
dependent on engine technology. The figure says that when
the break power is increasing NOx emission is also increased
for JME 20 and this may be due to late burning, prolonged
duration of combustion of JME.

The experimental work was conducted on diesel to examine

the effect of a engine performance and emission
characteristics and also found that the Brake thermal
efficiency of Diesel at various load.
The experimental work was conducted to examine the effect
of a JME on DI diesel engine performance and emission
characteristics. It is found that the efficiency of JME 20 is
closer to that of diesel.
The CO, HC and smoke emission are less for JME. Further
the blends B20 of JME are calculated for performance and
emission. It is very clear from the graph that the brake
thermal efficiency is more for diesel followed by B20 JME to
B100 JME. As the percentages of the blends are increasing
then the efficiency is also decreasing but however the
efficiency of JME20 is closer to the diesel.
Thus by implementing the concept of Electronic fuel
injection in DI Diesel engine for vegetable oils there is a
considerable decrease in the emiss ion and increasing
performance when compared to diesel and making the globe
free from pollution.
Acknowledgement
The author wish to express their gratitude to staff
members of Department of Mechanical Engineering, Anna
University, Villupuram campus, for their support in carrying
these tests.

Fig.8 Brake power vs NOx

REFERENCES
[1] Gustavo CovizziMennaBarneto Alonso, CarlesA.des Reis Filho,
automotive simulator for electronic fuel injections @SAE
1999-01-3053.
[2] A.K.Babu and G.Devaradjane, SAE 2003-01-0767.
[3] James W.Heffel, MichealN.McClanahan& Joseph M.Norbeck,
electronic fuel injection for hydrogen fueled IC engine @ SAE
981924.
[4] Gerald Vellguth, Performance of vegetable oils and their
monosters as fuels for diesel engines @SAE 1998-831358.
[5] Myung Yoon Kin, SeungHyung Yoon & Chang Sik Lee @ SAE1260-1265, 2008-10-1021.
[6] J.M.Desantes,
J.Benjes,
S.Molina,
C.A.Gonalez,
T he
modification of the fuel rate in heavy duty diesel engine @
SCIENCE DIRECT 2004-2701-2714.
[7] Y.V.HanumanthaRao, Ram SudheerVoleti, Experimental
investigations on Jatropha biodiesel and additive in diesel engine
Indian Journal of Science and T echnology, Vol 2 No 4 (Apr.
2009)

4) Hydrocarbon (HC)

Fig.9 Brake power vs HC

ISBN 978-93-80609-17-1
229

International Conference on Recent Advances in Mechanical Engineering and Interdisciplinary Developments [ICRAMID - 2014]

[8] Rao T V, Rao G P & Reddy K H C, Experimental investigation

of pongamia, jatropha and neem methyl esters as biodiesel on CI
engine, Jordan J Mech Ind Engg. (2010).
[9] Prabhakar S & Annamalai K, Effect of Injection time on the
performance and emissions of the non-edible biodiesel operated
diesel engine, Int J Appl Engg Res, 5 (2010) 2521 -2531.
[10] Internal Combustion Engines John B.Heywood.
[11] Computer simulation of compressed ignition Engine Processes
V.Ganesan.

ISBN 978-93-80609-17-1
230