Technical Paper
Modelling and Simulation of the Combustion of Ethanol blended Fuels in a SI Engine using a 0D Coherent Flame Model
2009-09-13
2009-24-0016
Motor fuels are today increasingly blended with oxygenate components to reduce global CO2 emissions. Among these components, biomass-derived ethanol is very popular for spark ignition engine operation as it is not only a renewable source of energy, but it also allows to increase the engine power and thermal efficiency. Indeed, ethanol has the advantage of a high latent heat of vaporization leading to the so-called “cooling effect” which allows to increase the air-mass flow rate in the engine while reducing the charge temperature. This last property of ethanol combined with its high octane index make the engine less sensitive to knock. Then, although ethanol is characterised by high combustion speeds, optimal values of spark advance can be maintained on a larger range of engine operating conditions and high compression ratios as well as increased levels of downsizing can be used, all these aspects contributing to improve fuel consumptions.