Abstract

An experimental study was conducted to establish the influence of cylinder pressure on the combustion behavior of a pressurized kerosene cook stove. The test was carried out under ambient room conditions, by pressurizing and ignitingthe cook stove containing kerosene fuel at a maximum pressure of 1 bar. The combustion flame temperature, flameheight and structure and colour were arefully measured andrecorded from a pressure gauge mounted on the fuel tank, a thermocouple, vernier height meter and by direct flamephotography. The same process was repeated for vessel pressures of 0.8, 0.6, 0.4, 0.2, and 0 bar after an interval period of two minutes, and for B5, B10, B15, and B20 kerosene oil blends and B100 (i.e. 100%) diesel oil fuel samples respectively The experiment was replicated for each vessel pressure levels, adulterated fuel samples and their mean result values were analyzed. The results show that combustion temperature and flame height of tested fuel samples are strongly influenced by the vessel pressure, and at maximum pressure, the flame temperatures for B2, B10, B15, B20 fuel blends and diesel fuel are lower than the kerosene by 8.82%, 11.76%, 15.58%, 20.59% and 8.82%. While, the flame height for B5, B15, B20 fuel blends and diesel fuel are higher than the benchmark by 0.22%, 1.11%, 18.89% and 37.77%. The enhanced combustion quality of the predominating kerosene fuel samples is largely influenced by the calorific values, ignition ability, stoichiometric mixtures, rate of combustion reactions, concentrations of the reactants, fuelmass flow rate, and the specific heat capacity of the fuelsamples. The result of the statistical analysis show a strongregression and76.9% of the variation in vessel pressure couldbe accounted for by the control variables. Going by thepresent petroleum products pricing program in Nigeria, theillicit practice of kerosene #x2013;diesel fuel adulteration is notcapable of generating any economic benefit, and hence wouldassist to stem the tid