Proceedings of the
International Conference on Mechanical Engineering 2009
(ICME2009) 26- 28 December 2009, Dhaka, Bangladesh

ICME09-TH-26

NON-CONVENTIONAL USE OF SMALL DIESEL ENGINES: CASE
STUDIES

Md. Ehsan1, M. N. Ibne Kabir2, Sumon Reza2, and M Shahnaz Sultana2
1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, BUET, Dhaka, Bangladesh
2Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIST, Dhaka, Bangladesh

ABSTRACT

Small diesel engines are widely used for producing mechanical or electrical power all over Bangladesh. Apart from conventional use in irrigation, electrical power generation and river transportation, such engines are now having many alternative applications. Because of their huge number they constitute a significant proportion of the consumption of diesel fuel, which needs to be imported. With increasing living costs, the cost of human work force is rising and that has recently opened up some new fields of application of such engines in Bangladesh. Since there is almost no reported formal study of such uses, three such fields have been case studied. These include – Brick-Crushing, Concrete-Mixing and Sugarcane Processing. A number of samples in each category were studied, which included – the engine specification, drive arrangement of the hardware, fuel consumption rate and system transportability. The maximum torque requirement was investigated against the engine capacity. The capital, running and maintenance cost have been analyzed to estimate the economic feasibility of such applications. The sensitivity of prime parameters, on the economic feasibility of replacing each human powered system, have been characterized.

Keywords: Diesel Engines, Non-Conventional Use, Alternative Use, Human Powered Systems.

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