Experimental investigation of ethanol diesel dual fuel DI diesel engine

Abstract

This paper investigates the combustion and performance characteristics of an ethanol – diesel dual fuel direct injection diesel engine. An air-cooled constant speed single cylinder diesel engine was operated with dual fuel mode in which ethanol was injected in the inlet manifold and diesel was injected inside the cylinder. An electronic fuel injection system operated by LabView software was used to inject the ethanol. Virtual instrumentation principle was used to generate output pulses for triggering ethanol injection. Diesel fuel was injected by conventional mechanical fuel injection system. The engine was loaded by an eddy current dynamometer. A piezoelectric pressure pickup with charge amplifier connected to PC based data acquistion system recorded cylinder pressure data at every crank angle interval. A crank angle degree marker measures the crank angle position for every crank angle. Tests were conducted on the engine in diesel and ethanol – diesel dual fuel mode. The cylinder pressure traces were used to calculate the heat release rates and combustion parameters. Optimum ethanol quantity was injected at every operating point. An AVL five-gas analyzer was used to measure the different exhaust pollutants. The smoke emission was measured by an AVL smoke meter in Hatridge equivalent percentage. Experimental results show that 40% of diesel can be replaced by ethanol at full load and there was 5.5% reduction in specific energy consumption. Also it was found that 32% reduction in smoke level (Opacity) and 25% reduction in NOx emissions at full load operating condition. It was also observed that the engine was running smoothly without knocking.