Gasoline Engine Performance, Emissions, Vibration And Noise With Methanol-Gasoline Fuel Blends

Abstract

The consumption of fossil fuels raises major issues, such as energy availability and environmental preservation. In order to minimize these issues, it is important to propose alternative fuel. Alternative fuel to be proposed should be easy to apply current type of enginethat do not require engine modification and environmentally friendly. This study aims to determine the effect of addition of methanol as a non-fossil fuel mixture into RON 88 gasoline. The ratio of mixture is 80% of RON 88 gasoline and 20% of methanol. We conducted the experiment to determine the mixture effect on fuel properties, engine performance, engine vibration, engine noise, and exhaust emissions. The engine simulation utilized the TV-1 engine (Kirloskar Oil Engines Ltd.). The results show that the engine performance of fuel mixed with methanol tends to be better even though the fuel consumption is higher, the highest specific fuel consumption in the methanol mixture is 2.9 kg/kwh while the specific fuel consumption for gasoline without a methanol mixture is 2.64 kg/kwh. The largest engine vibration occurred in the measurement of the vertical radial direction of 36 m/s2 and 34 m/s2 for with methanol and without the addition of methanol, at 1200 rpm to 1600 rpm respectively. Engine noise is higher for fuel mixed with methanol with the largest value of 86.4 dB compared to 85.7 dB for pure gasoline. Lower emission levels for fuel blended with methanol, where the highest HC emission for pure gasoline is 32 ppm while fuel mixed with methanol is 17 ppm.