ABSTRACT
The price volatilities of liquid hydrocarbon fuels in the international crude oil market, the consequent hike in energy cost, and environmental challenges resulting from the indiscriminate disposal of waste crankcase oils has necessitated the quest for alternative low cost energy option in Nigeria. This has prompted deliberate research efforts to recover energy from waste oils for the purpose of industrial heating. In this paper, waste oils drained from spark ignition engine sump, were collected and pre-treated to rid the oil samples of particulate matter, ferromagnetic materials and water. The oil was prepared and separated into two batches, one was blended with diesel and the other one with kerosene at the following blending ratios; B0 (unblended pre-treated oil samples), B10 (90% pre-treated oil samples, and 10% fuel blend), B20, B30, B40 and B50 (v/v %) respectively. The densities, and viscosities of each blend were determined in accordance to ASTM test protocols, and spot tests were also carried out to ascertain the homogeneity of all blended oil samples. Each oil sample was combusted in an atomising swirl oil burner, and their flame temperatures were recorded using a Type-K thermocouple, the flame length and flame widths were measured from a calibrated horizontal/vertical linear scale, and their photographic images were captured with a direct still digital camera. It was observed that the densities and viscosities of both diesel and kerosene blended fuels decrease somewhat as the blending ratio increases, and B30 diesel fuel blended sample generated the highest flame temperature (1396 , longest flame (360mm) and widest flame (115mm). While, B30 kerosene blended fuel samples recorded the highest flame temperature (1350 , and the longest flame (380mm) and widest flame (110mm).Even though all categories of blended fuel samples analysed demonstrated good combustibility in terms of their flame and thermal performance, diesel fuel blended oil samples were more homogenous than kerosene blended fuels samples, and the energy cost analysis tend to favour kerosene blended fuel samples over its diesel fuel blended counterpart.
