The continued escalation of fuel prices and environmental concerns among other factors has stimulated active research interest in non petroleum, renewable, and less polluting fuels. Biodiesel (Fatty acid methyl ester) has been identified as a suitable replacement for petroleum diesel in diesel engines [1]. Many feedstocks for biodiesel production have been proposed, with most vegetable oils being suitable substrates. As such, availability of property data is necessary for as many biodiesel fuels as possible, based on different plant oils, to evaluate suitability for use in diesel engines. With birrea plant’s huge abundance in Southern Africa and its high kernel oil content [2, 3], property data of its derived bio‐-diesel is deemed necessary. Moreover, one way of reducing the biodiesel production costs is to use the less expensive feedstock containing fatty acids such as inedible oils and by products of refinery processes [4]. This study investigated selected properties of birrea bi‐-odiesel including chemical composition, viscosity, acidity and calorific value. Engine per‐-formance in terms of fuel consumption, brake power and torque at a compression ratio of 16: 1, and emission levels of hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, oxides of ni‐-trogen and oxygen were also studied. Petroleum diesel is used to generate similar sets of data in order to compare the performance of the diesel engine using the two diesel fuels. This study is deemed significant as authors are not aware of any study that attempts to investigate sclerocarya birrea plant oil as a potential substrate for biodiesel production. As such, results from this work, including chemical composition, thermo-physical properties and performance of birrea biodiesel, provide new knowledge of a novel fuel source, and provide baseline information for further exploration.

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