Development of a biofuel lamp and its comparison with a kerosene lamp

N Chakraborty^I; S C Sarkar^II

^ICentre for Rural & Cryogenic Technologies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
^IICentre for Rural & Cryogenic Technologies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India, and Professor in Chemical Engineering, Durgapur Institute of Advanced Technology and Management, Rajbandh, Durgapur, India

ABSTRACT

An attempt has been made to explore the suitability of crude Jatropha curcas seed oil (biofuel) as a fuel in substituting fully one of the important petroleum products like Kerosene. Expeller is used for the extraction of oil which is further filtered. This crude oil has a very high viscosity and, as result, cannot flow through capillary action in a standard lamp and, hence, requires viscosity reduction by a trans esterification process to convert it into biodiesel or by any other processes. But this is a complex chemical reaction and the cost of production becomes almost doubled unless glycerine is not recovered as a by-product. Hence, the paper describes the development of a unique lamp (lantern) fuelled by 100% biofuel (crude jatropha oil) for its illumination and its comparative performance with respect to a standard kerosene lamp.

Keywords: Jatropha curcas, biofuel, illumination

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the Department of Science & Technology, Government of West Bengal for their financial support under the R&D project titled: Production of liquid fuel from Jatropha seeds, its physical characterization and study of its viability as an eco friendly fossil fuel substitute for the rural sector. The authors are also thankful to Dr. S. Ghosh of the Chemical Technology Department, Calcutta University, as well as to Sri. S. Das, A. Mukherjee, and B. Ghosh of CRCT, Jadavpur University, for their technical help during the work.

References

www.jatrophaworld.org.         [ Links ]

www.jatrophasource.com        [ Links ]

www.indobiofuel.com        [ Links ]

N.R.Chakraborty and S C Sarkar Production of Bio kerosene from Jatropha Curcas- Proceedings of National Conference in Frontier in Chemical Engineering, IIT - Guahati: December-2007, India.         [ Links ]

Received 14 November 2007
Revised 21 April 2008