Abstract
This paper follows on from an earlier publication on high-blend-rate binary gasoline-alcohol mixtures and reports results for some equivalent ternary fuels from several investigation streams. In the present work, new findings are presented for high-load operation in a dedicated boosted multi-cylinder engine test facility, for operation in modified production engines, for knock performance in a single-cylinder test engine, and for exhaust particulate emissions at part load using both the prototype multi-cylinder engine and a separate single-cylinder engine. The wide variety of test engines employed have several differences, including their fuel delivery strategies. This range of engine specifications is considered beneficial with regard to the “drop-in fuel” conjecture, since the results presented here bear out the contention, already established in the literature, that when specified according to the known ternary blending rules, such fuels fundamentally perform identically to their binary equivalents in terms of engine performance, and outperform standard gasolines in terms of efficiency. However, in the present work, some differences in particulate emissions performance in direct-injection engines have been found at light load for the tested fuels, with a slight increase in particulate number observed with higher methanol contents than lower. A hypothesis is developed to explain this result but in general it was found that these fuels do not significantly affect PN emissions from such engines. As a result, this investigation supplies further evidence that renewable fuels can be introduced simply into the existing vehicle fleet, with the inherent backwards compatibility that this brings too.
Highlights
The affordability of transport for the end-user is the key factor in the success of the motor vehicle, which has accelerated mankind’s economic development since its inception; cheap transportation is a driver of economies worldwide and this was not possible before the internal combustion engine (ICE).This state of affairs has arisen solely because of its cost-effectiveness and the resulting affordability and utility of the vehicles it is fitted to, coupled to the fact that liquid fuels make the storage and distribution of the energy that they require cost-effective
The results from these iso-stoichiometric blends will be compared to two commercial gasolines (95 and 98 research octane number (RON)), and with the project’s control fuel. This control or ‘base fuel’, was a standard pump gasoline sold as 95 RON fuel, but with some octane giveaway as a result of it having to achieve a motor octane number (MON) of 85, which is necessary for the European market
Open-loop air-fuel ratio (AFR) control was used at λ = 0.9 and 1.01. λ = 1.01 was chosen to avoid any small rich mixture excursions which are known to have a large effect on the particulate matter (PM) emissions from non-oxygenated fuels [59]
Summary
The affordability of transport for the end-user is the key factor in the success of the motor vehicle, which has accelerated mankind’s economic development since its inception; cheap transportation is a driver of economies worldwide and this was not possible before the internal combustion engine (ICE) This state of affairs has arisen solely because of its cost-effectiveness and the resulting affordability and utility of the vehicles it is fitted to, coupled to the fact that liquid fuels make the storage and distribution of the energy that they require cost-effective.
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