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Butanol is a potential alternative fuel for diesel in compression ignition (CI) engines. Many of the physico-chemical properties of butanol such as low carbon-to-hydrogen (C/H) ratio compared to diesel, higher heating value, lower heat of vaporization and suitable density-viscosity values compared to ethanol and methanol makes it suitable as an alternative fuel. However, poor cetane number and miscibility are the limitations associated with butanol. The use of fuel additives as ignition improver could be beneficial in overcoming the issues associated with alcohols. In this work, an experimental investigation in a twin-cylinder CI engine was carried out to assess the effect of doped cetane improving additives (Diethyl ether (DEE), Diglyme (DEGME) and Ethyl diglyme (DEGEE)) for diesel-butanol blend (B15).

Diesel engines are lucrative in terms of high thermal efficiency and low specific fuel consumption. The major drawbacks of these engines are high NOx and particulate matter (PM) emissions due to heterogeneous combustion. In the current emissions norms (BS-VI), a limit for particle number concentration is also introduced. There are few numerical studies investigating the soot particle size and number characteristics at different engine operating conditions. In this work, a parametric numerical study is conducted to investigate the effect of engine operating parameters on PM characteristics such as number density, size, and volume fraction. Simulations were performed using the Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes equation with renormalization group K-ε turbulence model available in ANSYS FORTE CFD software.

Diesel engines are one of the most important power generating units these days. Increasing greenhouse gas emission level and the need for energy security has prompted increasing research into alternative fuels for diesel engines. Biodiesel is the most popular among the alternatives for diesel fuel as it is biodegradable and renewable and can be produced domestically from vegetable oils. In recent years, hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) has also gained popularity due to some of its advantages over biodiesel such as higher cetane number, lower deposit formation, storage stability, etc. HVO is a renewable, paraffinic biobased alternative fuel for diesel engines similar to biodiesel. Unlike biodiesel, the production process for HVO involves hydrogen as catalyst instead of methanol which removes oxygen content from vegetable oil.

Diesel particulates are mainly composed of elemental carbon (EC) and organic carbon (OC) with traces of metals, sulfates and ash content. Organic fraction of the particulate are considered responsible for its carcinogenic effects. Diesel oxidation catalyst (DOC) is an important after-treatment device for reduction of organic fraction of particulates. In this study, two non-noble metal based DOCs (with different configurations) were prepared and evaluated for their performance. Lanthanum based perovskite (LaMnO3) catalyst was used for the preparation of DOCs. One of the DOC was coated with support material ceria (5%, w/w), while the other was coated without any support material. Prepared DOCs were retrofitted in a four cylinder water cooled diesel engine. Various emission parameters such as particulate mass, particle number-size distribution, regulated and unregulated emissions, EC/OC etc., were measured and compared with the raw exhaust gas emissions from the prepared DOCs.