Abstract

In the recent years the progressive decrease in fossil petroleum resources and gradual deprivation of the environment have attracted increasing interest towards the use of biomass as renewable carbon source for the production of chemicals and transportation fuels. In particular, lignocellulosic biomass represents an abundant and inexpensive renewable resource with high carbon sequestration ability and non-polluting. In this paper, the valorisation of mixtures made of n-butanol (n-BuOH), butyl levulinate (BL) and dibutyl ether (DBE), in different percentages, as additive fuel for compression ignition (CI) internal combustion engine (ICE) was studied. These mixtures can be directly obtained from the catalytic alcoholysis reaction of the cellulosic fraction of raw and pre-treated lignocellulosic biomasses. Moreover, the possibility to recycle and reutilize the excess alcohol (n-Butanol), during the catalytic alcoholysis reaction, has been considered since it represents an opportunity to reduce the overall costs of the process. Therefore, a blend constituted only by BL and DBE has been also tested. The model mixtures were prepared by using commercial reactants, characterized by compositions analogous to those of the reaction mixtures. These model mixtures were tested as blend with Diesel fuel in a CI-ICE with the measurement of pollutant emission and performance. Results have been compared with those obtained fuelling the engine with a commercial Diesel fuel. As a whole, tests results have evidenced the potentiality of these novel blending mixtures to reduce the emissions of particulate without any significant increase in the other pollutants and negligible changes in engine power and efficiency.

Highlights

  • In recent years, renewable fuel additives have been attracting more and more attention, especially in Europe, due to the new regulations concerning the improvement of renewables in fuel composition.In this work, the valorisation of mixtures made of n-butanol (n-BuOH), butyl levulinate (BL) and dibutyl ether (DBE), in different percentages, as additive fuel for compression ignition (CI) internal combustion engine (ICE) was studied

  • NOx emissions, as displayed in Figure 3, do not show any particular variation in comparison to the utilisation of Diesel fuel, indicating that the maximum combustion temperature remained practically unaltered. This is confirmed by the in-cylinder pressure curves obtained utilising the three blends, that do not show any significative variation in comparison with the utilisation of Diesel fuel only, especially at higher rpm, as reported in Figures 4 and 5, which compare, for different rpm, the engine pressure curves obtained utilising mixC 12% and Diesel fuel alone at full load

  • The present study shows the result of an experimental activity dedicated to verify the influence, on Diesel engines performance, of innovative fuel mixtures made of conventional Diesel, n-Butanol (n-BuOH), Butyl Levulinate (BL) and n-dibutyl ether (DBE)

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Summary

Introduction

The valorisation of mixtures made of n-butanol (n-BuOH), butyl levulinate (BL) and dibutyl ether (DBE), in different percentages, as additive fuel for compression ignition (CI) internal combustion engine (ICE) was studied. Two ternary mixtures nBuOH/BL/DBE were tested as blend with Diesel fuel (10 and 20% v/v) in a CI engine.

Results
Conclusion

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