Ethanol-diesel Blends Research Articles

Experimental Investigation of Performance and Emission Characteristics of Diesel-Bio Diesel (CSOME) with Nano Additive Blends in CI Engine

Increasingly stringent emissions regulations and environmental concerns have caused interest in the development of alternative fuels for internal combustion engines. Recently biobutanol, bioethanol and biodiesel emerged as an alternative fuel due to their oxygenated nature. This paper investigates the physical stability of ethanol-diesel blends using Cottonseed oil methyl esters diesel emulsifier as additives, subsequently analysis of physio-chemical properties. Furthermore, experimental tests were carried out to study the performance (fuel consumption, thermal efficiency, power, exhaust gas temperature) and emissions (CO, NOx, HC and Smoke) of Direct Injection (DI) engine fuelled with the various blends compared with those fuelled by diesel. The blends used for this study were D50B50, D60B30E10, D60B20E15DEE5 And D40B40E10DEE10.

Effect of Intake Charge Preheating and Equivalence Ratio in a Dual Fuel Diesel Engine Run on Biogas and Ethanol-Blended Diesel

Dual fuel diesel (DFD) engines have been gaining popularity due to the flexibility of using both bio and fossil liquid and gaseous fuels. Further, the efficient combustion in DFD mode with bio liquid and gaseous fuel can greatly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions as well as the dependency on fossil diesel. In recent times, a host of investigation has been done in normal dual fuel diesel (nDFD) mode with pure diesel and biogas. However, the engines with ethanol blended with diesel and intake charge (biogas–air mixture) with preheating have not been studied. In the present study, 5% ethanol blended with diesel (E5) and biogas with preheating are used in dual fuel engine (DFD-E5) to find their performance and emission characteristics. In order to have a direct comparison of performances, an engine with pure diesel (E0) and biogas with preheating is also tested in dual fuel mode (DFD-E0). In all the cases, the effect of total equivalence ratio on engine overall performance has also been investigated. In DFD-E5 mode, and at the maximum torque of 21.78 N·m, the brake thermal efficiency (BTE) increases by 2.98% as compared to nDFD mode. At the same torque, there is no trace of carbon monoxide (CO), whereas there is a reduction of hydrocarbon (HC) emission by 62.22% with respect to pure diesel (PD) mode. The nitrogen of oxides (NOx) is found to decrease in DFD modes in contrast to PD mode.

PERFORMANCE, EMISSION AND EFFICIENCY ANALYSIS OF A DIESEL ENGINE OPERATED WITH DIESEL AND DIESEL-ETHANOL (E20) BLEND

Conventional fossil fuel sources face with scarcity risk. Therefore, researchers are trying to find new renewable alternative energy sources which have potential to replace conventional sources. Alcohol and biodiesel are prominent sources among others. In this study, performance and emission characteristics of a diesel fuel and ethanol added (20% vol.) diesel fuel (E20) operated compression ignition engine was studied in between 1000 - 2600 engine speed. Torque, power, specific fuel consumption curves as performance and carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NOx) curves as emission parameters with respect to engine speed were obtained. Energy and exergy efficiency curves versus engine speed in order to assess the system thermodynamically were also obtained. Results showed that, while torque, power, CO emission were decreased, specific fuel consumption, NOx emission were increased with use of diesel-ethanol blends. On the other hand, both energy and exergy efficiency values were decreased when alcohol was added to diesel fuel. Article DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.20319/mijst.2017.33.5161 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA.

Key fuel properties and engine performances of diesel-ethanol blends, using tetrahydrofuran as surfactant additive

In this paper there were presented researches related to preparation and characterization of physicochemical properties of diesel-ethanol blends stabilized with tetrahydrofuran as surfactant, in order to be used as fuels in compression ignition engines. The main spray characteristics and engine performances of these blends were evaluated by using AVL Fire software. In the first stage of the studies, commercial diesel was mixed with ethanol, in different concentrations (between 2% and 15% v/v), followed by the addition of tetrahydrofuran (THF) until the blends were miscible, i.e. the blends were stabilized. The experiments were done at room temperature (22 °C). The obtained blends were characterized in order to determine the chemical composition and physicochemical properties, i.e. density, kinematic viscosity, surface tension. UV-Vis spectroscopy was utilized in order to determine a semi-quantitative evaluation regarding the chemical composition of the prepared blends and chemical interaction between diesel, ethanol and THF. Based on the determined properties, the fuel spray characteristics, engine performances and emission characteristics were evaluated by simulation using the AVL Fire software. The obtained results regarding physicochemical properties of blends were compared with diesel. Some improvements were observed when operating with the prepared blends compared to diesel with respect to engine performances and emission characteristics. Based on physicochemical evaluation and computer simulation, it was demonstrated that diesel-ethanol-tetrahydrofuran blends can be used as alternative fuel in compression ignition engines.

Study on the effect of exhaust gas-based fuel preheating device on ethanol–diesel blends operation in a compression ignition engine

Rapid depletion of fossil fuels and stringent emission regulations compel the scientific community to search for alternative energy sources for the internal combustion engines. Among many alternative biofuels, ethanol is getting worldwide attention for compression ignition engine either in the form of partial substitute or complete replacement for diesel fuel. Ethanol fuel has certain undesirable properties like poor flammability limit which results in cold starting issues and higher hydrocarbon emission which restricts their use in compression ignition engine. This issue can be easily overcome by preheating of ethanol fuel before it gets admitted inside the engine cylinder. In the present study, a standard preheating device is designed and fabricated in accordance with engine specifications and simulations were carried out under various operating conditions to evaluate its performance. Furthermore, experimental investigations were carried out in a compression ignition engine fueled with ethanol blends of 20 and 30% with diesel by volume and the fuel blends were preheated using burned exhaust gases. In addition, a comparative study has been carried out for preheated and non-preheated blends of E20 (20% of ethanol and 80% of diesel) and E30 with baseline diesel. The experimental results show that the preheated E20 (20% of ethanol and 80% of diesel) blend has higher brake thermal efficiency of 36.28% with a significant reduction in brake specific fuel consumption when compared with all the other blends. Moreover, the preheated E20 blend reduces the carbon monoxide, unburned hydrocarbon and smoke emissions by 49, 48 and 10%, respectively. However, the NOx emission is increased by 6% as compared to the non-preheating effect. It is also noted that the preheating of ethanol blends produced better combustion results with a significant reduction in the ignition delay period. Hence, it can be concluded that the ethanol fuel can be effectively used in a diesel engine by means of preheating using exhaust gases and could be a viable option for diesel engine applications.

Experimental Analysis of a Small Generator set Operating on Dual Fuel Diesel-Ethanol

This work aims to analyze the operation of a generator set on single fuel mode with diesel oil, and on dual fuel mode using diesel–ethanol blends. The engine used to realize the experimental analysis was a diesel cycle model, single cylinder, direct injection, air refrigerated and coupled to a three-phase electric generator, whose set capacity was 8.0 kVA. The generated electric energy was dissipated in electrical resistances inside a reservoir with running water. Fuels were blended in different volumetric ratios, using a small portion of vegetable castor oil to promote the homogenization. The percentages of substitutions of diesel oil were by 10% to 50%, increasing by 10% the replacement for each sample. Also, the engine was operated with 100% substitution of diesel oil, i.e., for this condition, the samples were composed of ethanol/castor oil 90/10 (volume/volume), 80/20 and 75/25. The blends of diesel and ethanol did not obtain good performance, mainly in taxes of substitution above 40%, causing combustion failures, operational instability, and increase of fuel consumption, although it has achieved a greatly reduction on opacity percentages. The blends with 100% of substitution of diesel oil obtained good performance except to blend with 90% ethanol, where occurred combustion failures, which caused operational instability. To these conditions, the results achieved are increase of consumption by 17%, decrease of opacity by 79%, decrease of exhaust gas temperature by 3.5% and increase of engine thermal efficiency by 1.3%. At the ethanol – castor oil blends there was a decrease in the percentage of opacity by 96%, decrease of exhaust gas temperature by 17.6%, with a minimum of operational irregularities, although fuel consumption has increased by 52.4% and the engine thermal efficiency has decreased almost 1.7%. http://dx.doi.org/10.18226/23185279.v5iss1p1

The influence of ethanol-diesel blend on pollutant emissions from different bus fleets under acceleration transitions

Main pollutant emissions produced by urban diesel buses are nitrogen oxides and particulate matter. Moreover, it is well known that level of emissions produced under real world driving conditions can be very different compared to those obtained under dyno-chassis tests or engine tests. The causes of these differences can be due to several sources such as operating conditions at various temperatures and pressures, different ground roughness, slopes, driver effect, change of gears or traffic. This work studies the effect of two different fuels on nitrogen oxides and particle size distributions under real world driving sequences of vehicle acceleration. Fuels tested were a low sulfur Diesel fuel (without biodiesel) and a binary ethanol–diesel fuel blend. This work was done with two models of similar buses, each one operating in cities located at different altitudes. Results show a reduction in particle concentration when ethanol-diesel blend was used. Mean geometric diameters decreased when ethanol-diesel was used. Concerning nitrogen oxides emissions, different trends were observed between vehicles depending on the transient sequence and the fuel used. Ethanol-diesel fuel blend reduces NOx at high altitude, but increases at low altitude. All results were probably affected by the altitude of the cities more than by the vehicle model itself.

Lubricity of ethanol–diesel blends – Study with the HFRR method

Due to increasing fuel consumption in various industries, especially in road transport, interest in increasing the market participation of renewable fuels is growing. One such fuel is ethanol. The raw materials for its production include sugar beets, sugar cane, potatoes and many other starch-containing plants. Ethanol can be used as a pure fuel in positive-ignition engines that have undergone relatively minor technical modifications. However, in compression-ignition engines, due to factors such as a very low cetane number and lubricity, ethanol cannot be used as a pure fuel. Therefore, increasing attention is being paid to fuel consisting of blends of diesel fuel with certain concentrations of ethanol. Diesel fuel containing up to 15% (v/v) ethanol is sometimes referred to as e-diesel or oxygenated diesel. In this paper, the lubricity of blends of conventional diesel fuel and ethanol, with ethanol content up to 14% (v/v), were tested. The HFRR (High-Frequency Reciprocating Rig) method was used for the research, which is a normative method of determining the lubricity of diesel fuel. For individual fuel samples, microscopic photographs of wear scar caused on test balls, along with the designation of areas that have been considered when measuring the diameters of wear scars, were presented. The obtained values of WSD (Wear Scar Diameter) were compared to the regulatory requirements for diesel fuels. Further measurements of kinematic viscosity, density and water content were conducted for individual fuel samples. The results showed that in the range of up to 14% (v/v), the proportion of ethanol in diesel fuel causes hardly any changes to its lubricity as determined by HFRR, and in addition, diesel fuel with up to 14% (v/v) added ethanol still meets the standard requirements in terms of lubricity.

Effective application of ethanol in diesel engines

ABSTRACTThis work aimed to prove the effects of adding different proportions of ethanol with diesel (DE) and ethanol–water mixture with diesel (DEW) in a single-cylinder diesel engine on the performance, emissions, and combustion parameters. The blends were stabilized by tetra methyl ammonium bromide (TMAB) as the additive. The study was conducted at two operating conditions initially on a normal diesel engine and in the second case the engine piston, valves, and cylinder head coated with zirconia (ZrO2) alumina (Al2O3). The results showed that the addition of 10% ethanol with diesel performed almost equivalent to neat diesel with 29.2% BTE and a 17.7% decrease in smoke and an 11.4% increase in NOx emission at peak load compared to that of the base fuel. Modified engines with thermal barrier coating (TBC) performed superior to normal engines with 4% and 5.5% increase in BTE, respectively, for DE- and DEW-type fuels with reduced exhaust emissions. A 5% addition of water with diesel–ethanol blends favors a higher proportion of ethanol to be employed in diesel engines.

The effect of the alcohol content in the fuel mixture on the performance and emissions of a direct injection diesel engine fueled with diesel-methanol and diesel-ethanol blends

The study presents experimental examinations of a single-cylinder stationary diesel engine fueled with diesel-methanol and diesel-ethanol blends. Volume percent of alcohol in the blends ranged from 0 to 40%. The addition and the increase in the methanol content of up to 30% in diesel-methanol blends had a positive effect on thermal efficiency of the engine whereas no significant changes were found in the values of indicated mean effective pressure. Moreover this increase led to a substantial reduction in carbon monoxide emissions and did show a significant effect on emissions of hydrocarbons and carbon dioxide. Further increase in volume percent of methanol of over 30% caused disturbances in the combustion process, a substantial decline in in-cylinder pressure and unsteady engine work. In the case of the diesel-ethanol blends, the improved work of the test engine was observed for all alcohol content values. Engine efficiency increased while maintaining the constant level of indicated mean effective pressure. CO emissions were reduced, whereas THC and CO2 emissions remained virtually unchanged. Addition of alcohol had a negative effect on nitrogen oxides emissions from the engine fueled with both diesel-methanol and diesel-ethanol blends. After exceeding the 30% content of alcohol, the work non-repeatability reflected by the COVIMEP coefficient increased to over 10%, which can be considered as a limit of steady work of the combustion engine.

Early Injected PCCI Engine Fuelled with Bio Ethanol and Diesel Blends – An Experimental Investigation

Abstract In this paper the work deals with the Experimental analysis of the early direct injected PCCI. For this investigations, the neat diesel and bio ethanol - diesel blend (E20) fuels were used as fuel and the pressure, combustion and emission characteristics were studied in the equivalence ratio of 0.6 (ɸ = 0.6). The injection timing was advanced to 18° rather than the normal 23° before top dead centre (BTDC) as specified engine conditions. For the Experimental analysis the partial homogeneity of the charge was achieved by injecting the fuel in the pre chamber which consists of a heater unit. The fuel injection timing was controlled with respective to the crank angle timing with the help of an ECU unit. In the pre chamber the fuel was vaporised and the partial homogeneous charge was fed in to the engine during the suction stroke. The injection timing was advanced by removing shim from the cam shaft rocker arm mechanism of the engine. The results of the neat diesel and bio ethanol diesel (E20) blends were compared and oxides of Nitrogen were reduced to very lower levels when compared to neat diesel operations.

Production of Bio-ethanol from an Underexploited Fruit of Muntingia calabura and Studying Performance and Emission Characteristics of Single Cylinder CI Engine

The need of bio-ethanol is being increased now a days, hence the production of bio-ethanol must be increased using cheaper and eco-friendly raw materials. Based on these criteria, underexploited fruits were considered as cheaper and eco-friendly source for bio-ethanol production. In the present study fruits from Singapore cherry ( Muntingia calabura ) was used as raw material to produce bio-ethanol by using Saccharomyces cerevisiae (yeast). The results obtained from this work shows that the higher rate of ethanol production through fermentation at the operating conditions (pH 5.5, temperature 30±2°C, speed 80 rpm, fermentation period 15 days) were feasible. The extracted bio-ethanol tested as a fuel in CI engine. Experimental work on performance and emission characteristics of ethanol blended diesel fuel was conducted on single cylinder four stroke CI engines at operating pressure 210 bar with rated speed of 1500 rpm. The different blends of Singapore cherry fruit fuel with diesel were also conducted. The results of this study suggests that fruits from Singapore cherry contain rich fermentable sugars and those can be converted into useful products like bio-ethanol, that serves as an alternative energy source.

A comparative study of co-combustion process of diesel-ethanol and biodiesel-ethanol blends in the direct injection diesel engine

Abstract This paper presents the results of a comparative analysis of co-combustion of diesel and biodiesel fuels with hydrated ethanol. The engine tests were conducted for an on-cylinder natural aspirated compression ignition engine operated at a constant rotational speed of 1500 rpm. Experimental investigations were also conducted to evaluate the effects of using hydrated ethanol as additives to diesel or biodiesel fuels to enhance performance, emission and combustion characteristics of direct injection diesel engines. The test engine powered by a diesel-ethanol blend (DE) was compared to a biodiesel-ethanol (BE) blend, characterized by higher values of IMEP and ITE. In the case of the DE blend, the highest ITE value was obtained for 35% of the ethanol fraction (35%). As for the BE blend, similar ITE values (31%) were obtained over the entire range of the ethanol fuel fraction in the blend. In the case of pure B100 or D100 the ignition delay achieves near the same value equal to 17 deg. The lower unrepeatability of engine cycle obtained for the BE blend combustion did not exceed 10%. The highest NO x emissions were obtained for the DE blend with 30% of the EF fraction (5.5 g/kW h). Emissions of THC and NO x increase up to 35% of the EF fraction in blend.

Effect of injection parameters on performance and emission characteristics of a CRDi diesel engine fuelled with acid oil biodiesel–ethanol blended fuels

ABSTRACTThe objective of this paper is to study the effect of injection timing and injection pressure on the engine performance and emission characteristics in a single-cylinder common rail direct injection (CRDi) diesel engine fuelled with acid oil biodiesel, diesel and ethanol blends. The biodiesel used for the study was obtained by a suitable esterification of acid oil named as acid oil methyl ester (AOME) and was subsequently blended with diesel and ethanol in varied percentage. Characterization of these fuels and their blends has been done to ascertain the applicability of these fuels for the existing engine. The feasibility of using a high percentage of biodiesel in diesel–ethanol blends has been investigated. Initially the experiments were carried out on a CRDi engine with diesel, biodiesel and their blends to optimize the injection timing (IT), where IT was varied from 25° before top dead centre (bTDC) to 5° after top dead centre (aTDC) keeping injector pressure (IP) of 600 bar, compression ratio (CR) of 17.5 and speed of 1500 rpm. Results showed that improved brake thermal efficiency (BTE) is achieved between IT of 15 to 10° bTDC. Increased ethanol content in the blend resulted in increased BTE and the blends showed higher HC and CO and reduced NOx emissions compared to diesel fuel. Finally, experiments were conducted to optimize IP where IP was varied from 600 to 1000 bar keeping optimized IT of 10° bTDC, CR of 17.5 and speed of 1500 rpm. Results revealed that maximum BTE was obtained at 900 bar. As the alcohol concentration in the blends increases, CO and HC emissions increased while NOX emissions reduced. From the experimental study, IT of 10° bTDC and IP of 900 bar were optimized for better performance with significant reduction in emissions. AOME (60%) and their blends with ethanol and diesel can be successfully used as an alternative fuel with high injection pressures in diesel engines.

Evaluation of High Speed Diesel Engine Performance and Charecteristics of its Emissions with Carbon Nanotubes Added Ethanol-Diesel Blends

Evaluation of High Speed Diesel Engine Performance and Charecteristics of its Emissions with Carbon Nanotubes Added Ethanol-Diesel Blends

Investigation of diesel-ethanol blended fuel properties with palm methyl ester as co-solvent and blends enhancer

Diesel engine is known as the most efficient engine with high efficiency and power but always reported as high fuel emission. Malaysia National Automotive Policy (NAP) was targeting to improve competitive regional focusing on green technology development in reducing the emission of the engine. Therefore, ethanol was introduced to reduce the emission of the engine and while increasing its performance, Palm methyl ester was introduced as blend enhancer to improve engine performance and improve diesel-ethanol blends stability. This paper aimed to study the characteristics of the blends and to prove the ability of palm-methyl-ester as co-solvent in ethanol-diesel blends. Stability and thermophysical test were carried out for different fuel compositions. The stability of diesel-ethanol blended was proved to be improved with the addition of PME at the longer period and the stability of the blends changed depending on temperature and ethanol content. Density and viscosity of diesel-ethanol-PME blends also give higher result than diesel-ethanol blends and it's proved that PME is able to increase density and viscosity of blends. Besides, heating value of the blends also increases with the increasing PME in diesel-ethanol blends.

Development of a diesel-biodiesel-ethanol combined chemical scheme and analysis of reactions pathways

Diesel-biodiesel-ethanol blends have been the focus of intense research quite recently. Diesel is a complex fuel composed of hundreds of compounds indicating the difficulty of using diesel for experimental studies associated with numerical simulations. Biodiesel is also a complex mixture of methyl esters. When injected in a diesel engine in the pure form, it induces changes in combustion behavior which can impact pollutants emission. Consequently simplified synthetic fuels, called “surrogate fuels”, with shorter chain lengths and known physical chemical properties are chosen to carry combustion studies. Finally, ethanol is one of the liquid alternative fuels most widely studied. The present paper focuses on numerical studies of the combustion of diesel-biodiesel-ethanol blends using 0D auto-ignition delay and 1-D freely-propagating gaseous premixed flame configurations. The objective is to develop and validate a new chemical scheme by carefully combining two existing chemical schemes from the literature. The first one is the scheme due to Andrae (2011) for the combustion of diesel-ethanol blends and the second one is due to Luo et al. (2012) for a biodiesel surrogate. The approach consists of merging non common elementary reactions from both chemical schemes and analyzing the common reactions (having different reaction constants) in both chemical schemes in order to chose most relevant chemical pathways from each scheme so that the resulting merged scheme gives a good prediction of the auto-ignition delay and laminar flame speed.

Experimental investigation into effects of addition of zinc oxide on performance, combustion and emission characteristics of diesel-biodiesel-ethanol blends in CI engine

This study is to investigate the effect of zinc oxide nano particle addition to diesel-biodiesel-ethanol blends. Solubility tests were done for the fuels at three different temperatures. Out of eighteen blends, six blends were stable at 5°C, 15°C and above 25°C. Out of the six blends, two blends were checked for properties as per ASTM standards. One of them was chosen for testing the performance, combustion and emission characteristics in a diesel engine. In the same blend, zinc oxide was added in the amount of 250ppm. Property testing of the blended fuel indicated that there was an increase in calorific value due to addition of nano particle. The performance tests were conducted on a single cylinder four stroke direct injection diesel engine at a constant speed of 1500 rpm. For the blend containing zinc oxide, there was an increase in BSFC, HRR and cylinder pressure. Also, there was a decrease in BTE, NOx and smoke, as compared to diesel. The addition of zinc oxide nano particles increased the BTE and decreased the BSFC as compared with the biodiesel diesel ethanol blend at full load. This study gives a direction to utilize the renewable fuel to reduce the consumption of fossil fuel.

Effect of oxygenated and paraffinic alternative diesel fuels on soot reactivity and implications on DPF regeneration

A wide range of alternative fuels has recently emerged worldwide, as a means to reduce the dependence on fossil resources and to meet the stringent energy and emissions legislations. In the diesel market, oxygenated biofuels such as biodiesel and e-diesel (low content ethanol-diesel blends) and paraffinic fuels such as those derived from Fischer-Tropsch processes (GTL) or hydro-treatment of vegetable oils (HVO) stand out as the most promising ones. A current challenge that these fuels face is their effect on loading and regeneration performance in diesel particle filters –DPFs–, an aftertreatment technique commonly adopted to abate particulate emissions. This work analyses the oxidative behavior of soot under controlled temperature-atmosphere conditions. Five fuels (conventional diesel fuel, e-diesel, HVO, GTL and conventional biodiesel) were tested in a Euro 5 automotive engine. The effect of the oxidant gas composition (oxygen content and NO2 presence) and the engine injection strategy (small modifications around the original manufacturer setting) were analyzed. Results revealed a greater ability of soot from paraffinic and, especially, oxygenated biofuels to be oxidized under lower temperature conditions. In particular, e-diesel soot needed the lowest temperature and its oxidation pattern was the fastest and the least sensitive to the oxygen concentration in the exhaust gas, which makes feasible the use of exhaust gas recirculation during active regeneration. From the original injection strategy, small advances/delays and/or the presence of a fuel post-injection did not significantly alter the reactivity of soot. NO2 concentration in the exhaust gas showed no significant effect on the soot oxidation process at temperatures higher than 300°C.

Experimental and CFD Analysis of Combustion in Diesel Engine for Various Ethanol-Diesel Blends

Experimental and CFD Analysis of Combustion in Diesel Engine for Various Ethanol-Diesel Blends