Determining Water Content of Non-Surfactant Emulsion Fuel Using Bomb-Calorimeter

Abstract

Non-surfactant Water-in-Diesel emulsion fuel (NWD) has short stability period and tend to separate immediately into water and diesel. NWD needs to be supplied into the diesel engine or combustor as soon as it was formed. Since the combustion and emission performance are closely related to the water content of an emulsion fuel, the immediate water content of NWD needs to be more closely inspected. The ASTM D95 standard provides a method to determine the water content of an NWD, but this method takes a long time to perform (up to 2 hours) and arduous. This paper describes the estimation of water content in a non-surfactant emulsion fuel by bomb-calorimetry, which can deliver quicker results than ASTM distillation. Experiments were performed with samples of emulsion fuel using and void of surfactant. The samples were first homogenized using an ultrasonic bath before they were sent to a bomb-calorimeter. The higher heating value of the emulsion was estimated using the weighted average since the components were deemed to be non-reactive. The bomb-calorimetric results of the non-surfactant emulsion fuel showed a close proximation, while the emulsion fuel with surfactant delivered less conclusive results. It was concluded from this study that an estimation of water content in NWD could be performed using bomb-calorimetry eight times faster than using the ASTM D95 standard with a deviation of maximum 3%.