Experimental investigation on the influences of varying injection timing on the performance of a B20 JOME biodiesel fueled diesel engine / S. Jaichandar and K. Annamalai

This experimental study aims to optimize the injection timing to achieve higher performance from biodiesel fueled Direct Injection (DI) diesel engine. Experiments were performed using a naturally-aspirated single cylinder DI diesel engine equipped with a conventional jerk type injection system to study the effects of varying injection timing on the combustion, performance and exhaust emissions using a blend of 20% Jatropha Oil Methyl Ester (JOME) by volume with diesel. The test results showed that improvement in terms of brake thermal efficiency and specific fuel consumption for the engine operated at retarded injection timing, particularly at 21o bTDC. Substantial improvements in reduction of emission levels particularly oxides of nitrogen (NOx) were observed for retarded injection timing of 21o bTDC. Compared to the engine operated at standard injection timing of 23o bTDC, the retarded injection timing of 21o bTDC provided a better performance of 2.27% and 3.4% in terms of BTE and BSFC respectively and NOx emission level improvement of 4.5%. However, CO, UBHC and smoke emission levels were slightly deteriorated compared to standard injection timing operation. It has also been found that retarding the injection timing lowers marginally ignition delay, peak in-cylinder pressure and maximum heat release rate

An Intelligent FPGA Based Anti-Sweating System for Bed Sore Prevention in a Clinical Environment

Bed sores, a common problem among immobile patients occur as a result of continuous sweating due to increase in skin to bed surface temperature in patients lying on same posture for prolonged period. If left untreated, the skin can break open and become infected. Currently adopted methods for bed sores prevention include: use of two hourly flip chat for repositioning patient or use of air fluidized beds. However, the setbacks of these preventive measures include either use of costly equipment or wastage of human resources. This paper introduces an intelligent low cost FPGA based anti-sweating system for bed sores prevention in a clinical environment. The developed system consists of bed surface implanted temperature sensors interfaced with an FPGA chip for sensing the temperature change in patient’s skin to bed surface. Based on the temperature change, the FPGA chip select the - mode (heater/cooler) and speed of the fan module. Furthermore, an alarm module was implemented to alert the nurse to reposition the patient only if patient’s skin to bed surface temperature exceeds a predefined threshold thereby saving human resources. By integrating the whole system into a single FPGA chip, we were able to build a low cost compact system without sacrificing processing power and flexibility

Performance and exhaust emission analysis on pongamia biodiesel with different open combustion chambers in a DI diesel engine

487-491This study presents effects of combustion chamber geometries (hemispherical, toroidal and shallow) by using pongamia oil methyl ester (POME) blended with diesel (20:80) in a single cylinder, direct injection diesel engine. Brake thermal efficiency for toroidal combustion chamber was found higher than that of other two combustion chambers. Significant improvement in reduction of particulates, carbon monoxide and unburnt hydrocarbons was observed for toroidal combustion chamber compared to the other two. However, nitrogen oxides were slightly higher for toroidal combustion chamber