Paper Title: Revolutionary Exploration: Unleashing the Power of Rice Bran Oil Biodiesel in Compression Ignition Diesel Engines

Author's name: Arul Raj Kumaravel, Narmatha Deenadayalan, Sundar Vettum Perumal, Andrew.H Sadallah

Research has been conducted on the extraction of oil from rice bran seeds, resulting in the development of rice bran oil, an edible oil. As part of the investigation into alternative fuel solutions, a biofuel has been synthesized by esterifying rice bran oil with methanol and potassium hydroxide. Esterification is a crucial process in biofuel production as it facilitates the extraction of free fatty acids (FFA) present in vegetable oils. The biofuel obtained from this process undergoes further purification to eliminate glycerol content. The resulting biofuel is then blended with diesel in different proportions (B5, B10, B20, and B30) and evaluated using a single cylinder diesel engine. To assess the performance of the biofuel blends, a comparison was made against pure diesel (D100). The aim was to determine the blend that would exhibit optimal performance by improving mechanical efficiency and reducing fuel consumption. After careful evaluation, B10 was selected as the most promising blend, demonstrating performance on par with diesel fuel. The findings indicate that rice bran blends have the potential to serve as viable substitute fuels for diesel engines. In addition to the experimental data, an artificial neural network was developed to predict engine performance. The results obtained from this analysis displayed a strong correlation with the experimental findings, as evident from the high correlation coefficient value approaching unity. This suggests that the artificial neural network model is a reliable tool for estimating engine performance when using rice bran oil blends as fuel.

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