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The performance and emission of an AVL 5402 single-cylinder engine fueled with acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) / diesel blends were experimentally investigated at various load conditions and injection timings. The fuels tested in the experiments were ABE10 (10% ABE, 90% diesel), ABE20 and diesel as baseline. Thermodynamics analyses of pressure traces acquired in experiments were performed to show the impact of ABE concentration to the overall combustion characteristics of the fuel mixtures. Cumulative heat release analysis showed that ABE mixtures generally retarded the overall combustion phasing, ignition delays of ABE-containing fuels were significantly extended, however, combustion rate during CA10∼CA50 were accelerated at different extent. Pressure rise rate of ABE-containing fuels further implicated that the premixed combustion were more dominant than that of diesel. Polytropic indices of both expansion and compression strokes were calculated from p-V diagram.

Butanol has proved to be a very promising alternative fuel in recent years. The production of bio-butanol, typically done using the acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) fermentation process is expensive and consumes a lot of energy. Hence it is of interest to study the intermediate fermentation product, i.e. water-containing ABE as a potential fuel. The combustion and emissions performance of ABE29.5W0.5 (29.5 vol.% ABE, 0.5 vol.% water and gasoline blend), ABE30 (30 vol.% ABE and gasoline blend) and ABE0 (pure gasoline) were investigated in this study. The results showed that ABE29.5W0.5 enhanced engine torque by 9.6%-12.7% and brake thermal efficiency (BTE) by 5.2%-11.6% compared to pure gasoline, respectively. ABE29.5W0.5 also showed similar brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC) relative to pure gasoline.

Ethanol is the most widely used renewable fuel in the world now. Compared to ethanol, butanol is another very promising renewable fuel for internal combustion engines. It is less corrosive, and has higher energy density, lower vapor pressure and lower solubility in water. However, the use of Acetone-Butanol-Ethanol (ABE), an intermediate product in ABE fermentation, presents a cost advantage over ethanol and butanol and has attracted much attention recently. In this study, three high-alcohol-content gasoline blends (85% vol. of ethanol, butanol and ABE, referred as E85, B85 and ABE85, respectively) were investigated in a port-injection spark-ignition engine. ABE has a component ratio of 3:6:1. In addition, pure gasoline was also tested as a baseline for comparison. All fuels were tested under the same conditions (1200 RPM, Φ = 0.83−1.25, BMEP = 3 bar).