Performance Evaluation of Pangium edule Biodiesel Developed Using Palm Kernel Shell Heterogeneous Catalyst as Alternative Fuel in Multifunction Diesel Engine

The main idea of this article is to provide further knowledge related to the application of pure biodiesel in a custom power generator. Previous research has shown preliminary results regarding the potential of Pangium edule. Biodiesel as feedstock and has been tested to run a diesel engine with lower rotational speed. The biodiesel in this research has been prepared using a heterogeneous catalyst derived from a palm kernel shell impregnated with K2CO3. In this research, small alternator is driven by Yanmar TF65 R-DI multifunction diesel engine, which is easily assembled and has been utilized as a power generator to be evaluated. The engine was tested under various biodiesel blend with given load and connected to multiple instrument to record data required, i.e. engine speed (rpm), fuel flow (ml/sec), voltage (V), and current (A) readings. The data series then used to analyse the engine performances. The custom power generator has been designed to work at 5.5 kWh in prolonged operation time, suitable to supply typical household wattage in the region, ranging from 0.9 up to 3 kWh. The fuel mixtures containing 20% biodiesel, or B20, is still desirable to use in general multipurposes diesel engine. While B30 show similar potential but it does not show a similar performance as in higher rotational speed diesel power generator as demonstrated earlier. However, PE biodiesel still shows a promising performance as an alternative source of diesel engine fuel.