Phase doppler anemometry measurements of a dense rapeseed oil spray

Michał Bialkowski,M Brautsch,G Elsbett,D Towers,T Pekdemir

doi:10.19206/ce-117368

Abstract

High pressure, dense rapeseed oil (RSO) sprays have been investigated using a Phase Doppler Anemometry (PDA) setup. Samples of cold pressed RSO were pre-heated and injected at various pressures (56.3, 76.0, 93.8,112.5,131.3 MPa) and six different ambient densities (3,6,15,30,45,60 kg/m3). High density of RSO significantly affects the quality of sizing measurements, and leads to the similar experimental problems which have been found for the dense Diesel spray. The sizing tests involved analysis of the influence of the photomultiplier (PMT) voltage and injection conditions on droplet validation. The sensitivity of the PMT at 1000 V was found as the most appropriate in the performed tests. The droplet size distributions revealed that the increasing ambient pressure results in a deformed Gaussian drop size distribution having larger number of small droplets. Furthermore, the increasing injection and ambi-ent pressures lower the mean droplet diameter but result in the significant decrease of the droplet validation. Despite the experimental difficulties of applying the PDA technique to RSO sprays it is concluded the method can be successfully used if the appropriate adjustment of PDA parameters is undertaken.

Highlights

There has been an increasing interest in rapeseed oil (RSO) as a potential Diesel substitute
A similar approach of a dense spray analysis was applied by Lacoste et al [19] working with high pressure Diesel sprays
In general the RSO drop population consisted of a significant number of larger drops within a range of 60-100 μm in comparison to the expected Diesel spray

Summary

Introduction

There has been an increasing interest in rapeseed oil (RSO) as a potential Diesel substitute. A number of literature publications have reported promising results of RSO operation in various Diesel engines [6, 10, 23, 25, 28]. It is apparent that the successful substitution of Diesel by any non-crude oil based fuel will be depending on whether they posses the same spray characteristic. The parameters like the Sauter, arithmetic or De Broukere mean diameters should provide guidelines for redesign-ing or modification of injection and combustion systems to make them capable to operate on neat RSO. The tests should provide a similar set of results which had been already collect-

Methods

Results

Conclusion