Investigation on CuO nanoparticle enhanced mahua biodiesel/diesel fuelled CI engine combustion for improved performance and emission abetted by response surface methodology

In this study, the characteristics of diesel engines were tested with in-house produced mahua biodiesel blended with diesel and copper oxide nanoparticles (CuO NP) catalyst. The preliminary investigation used mahua biodiesel-diesel blends (M10, M20, and M30) among them M20 outperformed. Further M20 and CuO NP with concentrations of 25, 50, and 75 ppm are studied. Finally, the response surface methodology (RSM) was used to determine the appropriate NP concentration for M20. The findings showed that the blend of M20 with 60 ppm NP at 80% load had the highest desirability (0.9740), and the developed RSM model predicted engine responses with a mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of 3.0962% to the confirmation test confirming the model's accuracy. The optimized M20NP60 blend demonstrated superior combustion, performance and emission characteristics.