Experimental Study of Spray Characteristics of Kerosene, Biofuels and Their Blends for Gas Turbine

Conserving limited conventional fuel resources and searching for sustainable energy sources are becoming the necessities of the modern world. Methanol, SVO, biodiesel, kerosene methanol and kerosene biodiesel blends can be some suitable alternatives of kerosene, as a fuel. By using these fuels spray characteristics are done with a pressure swirl atomizer experimentally. This work also describes the preparation of biodiesel from straight vegetable oil (SVO) i.e. sunflower oil. Further sunflower oil biodiesel is blended in 5% and 10% by volume with kerosene. From the present study it has been found that, due to the low viscosity of methanol, the spray cone angle of the methanol blend is larger than kerosene. For the methanol blend more liquid mass is distributed in patternation whereas for kerosene less liquid mass is distributed mainly due to less cone angle. Further, it is seen that the cone angle of biodiesel blends is higher than that of kerosene for a certain flow rate due to the lower viscosity of biodiesel compared to kerosene. However, the cone angle of SVO is much less compared to other cases because of its high viscosity. The viscosity of sunflower oil is more than kerosene and the viscosity of biodiesel is less than kerosene. Therefore, with the increase in viscosity, FN increases from 10% blend, 5% blend, kerosene and then SVO. Thus, the power required for atomization of 10% blend is less than that for 5% blend of kerosene than that of SVO. For biodiesel blends more liquid mass is distributed in patternation whereas for kerosene less liquid mass is distributed mainly due to less cone angle. The above observation can conclude that we can adopt some of the biofuels fully or partially in a gas turbine engine with some modifications.