Due to growing environmental concerns, vegetable oils are finding their way into lubricants for industrial and transportation applications. The substitution of mineral oil with vegetable oil as a base stock for an environment friendly lubricant in a CI engine is explored in this study without adding any additives. The experiments have been conducted with a mixture of palm oil and mineral oil, at different compositions. Blends of palm oil and mineral oil in different compositions, 0, 25, and 50 (by vol %) were added to base SAE20W40 mineral oil to obtain different lubricant blends. The parameters evaluated include brake thermal efficiency, brake specific fuel consumption, volumetric efficiency, and mechanical efficiency and exhaust emissions. The engine performance and emission tests were carried out on a single cylinder, water cooled, 4-stroke CI engine. Compared to mineral oil, the palm oil-based lubricant revealed appreciable expedience on engine and emission performance.

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The spray characteristics of the diesel fuel are greatly affected by the cavitation formed inside the injector due to the high pressure differential across the nozzle. Many researchers across the globe are exploring the potential of using diethyl ether and dimethyl ether as an alternate for diesel fuel to meet the strict emission norms. Due to the variation in the fuel properties the internal flow characteristics in injectors for ether fuels are expected to be different from that of the diesel fuel. In this paper computational technique is used to study and compare the internal flow characteristics of diethyl ether, dimethyl ether and diesel fuel. The two phase flow model considering the fuel as a mixture of liquid and vapor is adopted for the simulation study. The injection pressure is varied from 100 to 400 bar and the flow characteristics of all three fuels are simulated and compared. Results indicate that all three fuels have distinct cavitating patterns owing to different property values. The dimethyl ether is found to be more cavitating than diesel and diethyl ether fuels as expected. The mass of fuel injected are found to be decreasing for the ether fuels when compared with diesel fuel at all injection pressures

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Due to technological advancements, nanocomposites are being considered as one of the candidate materials for manufacturing wide variety of automobile components such as brake rotors, pistons, cylinder liners and transmission housings etc. Due to lower manufacturing cost and simplicity, stir casting is the most common method to produce the nanocomposites. The final properties of nanocomposites produced through stir casting primarily depend upon the uniform distribution of nanoparticles, but then influenced by stir cast processing parameters. The influence of stir casting parameters such as stirrer blade angle (90°, 70° and 50°), rotating speed (400 rpm, 600 rpm and 800 rpm) on the better distribution of nanoparticles (2% by wt.) in the molten aluminium alloy matrix was investigated using finite element analysis. These casting parameters were also optimized to provide a fluid flow behavior that results in the effective distribution of nanoparticles. The validation of numerical results was done by manufacturing a nanocomposite at these optimized processing conditions. The microstructural evaluation of the developed nanocomposite revealed the uniform distribution of nanoparticles in the base matrix.