Combustion Phenomena of Alcohols in C. I. Engines

Abstract

A study was conducted on a direct-injection, single-cylinder, research-type diesel engine to determine the effect of adding ethanol or isopropanol to diesel fuel on the ignition delay period. The test parameters were alcohol content, intake-air properties, and fuel-air ratio. It was found that the ignition delay of alcohol-diesel blends is prolonged as the alcohol content is increased. Ethanol-diesel blends developed longer ignition delays than those developed by isopropanol-diesel blends. The results showed that ignition delay of alcohol-diesel blends can be effectively shortened using intake-air preheating and/or supercharging. The high activation energy of alcohols with respect to diesel fuel is believed to be responsible for the long ignition delays associated with the use of alcohols as alternate fuels in compression ignition engines.

Experimental heat release analysis and emissions of a HSDI diesel engine fueled with ethanol–diesel fuel blends

“…By all estimates, ethanol has a very low cetane number that reduces the cetane level of the diesel-ethanol blend, requiring normally the use of cetane enhancing additives, which improve ignition delay and mitigate cyclic irregularity [26,[29][30][31]. Ethanol has much lower flash point than the diesel fuel and higher vapor formation potential in confined spaces, thus requiring extra precautions to ensure safe handling and use of these blends [12].…”

Energy Saving and Pollution Reduction by Adding Water Containing Iso-Butanol and Iso-Propyl Alcohol in a Diesel Engine

“…From biomass, isopropyl alcohol can be produced via fermentation process using microbes such as cyanobacteria such as Clostridium beijerinckii, Escherichia coli and Synechococcus elongates (Dusséaux et al, 2013;Kusakabe et al, 2013;Hirokawa et al, 2015). Even though there are not so many research studies on iso-propanol, its use in engines has been studied as early as 1989 in compression ignition engines (Saeed and Henein, 1989) and recently in gasoline and spark ignition engines (Gong et al, 2014). Recently, (Balamurugan and Nalini, 2014) in their paper investigated the performance of 1-propyl alcohol when blended with diesel fuels and reported reduced break specific energy, reduced engine operating temperatures which translates to increased engine life, as well as reduced CO and NO x emissions.…”

“…In fact, Gong et al (2014) reports that the International Energy Agency projects the use of biofuels such as alcohols is expected to go up from 3% in 2010 to about 27% by 2050. Alcohols can be easily distilled from the abundantly available biomass resources which are also renewable (Saeed and Henein, 1989;Kumar et al, 2013).…”

Effects of Particulate Matter Emissions of Diesel Engine using Diesel–Methanol Blends

“…Thus, methanol can give better results in terms of combustion characteristics in spark ignition engines (Mat Yasin, Mamat, Sharma, & Yusop, 2012;Sayin, Uslu, & Canakci, 2008). However, some difficulties have been reported when using methanol in diesel engines due to the low cetane number, high latent heat of vaporization and long ignition delay (Saeed & Henein, 1989). In order to overcome these problems, several methods have been introduced by researchers, such as dual injection, methanol-diesel fuel blends and methanol-diesel fuel emulsion (Kulakoğlu, 2009).…”