Dyno Test Investigations of Gasoline Engine Fueled with Butanol-Gasoline Blends 2009-01-1891

As the issue of oil shortage and air pollution caused by automotive engine emissions become more and more serious day by day, researchers and engineers from all over the world are seeking for alternative fuels of lower pollution and renewable nature. This paper discusses in detail the feasibility of fueling gasoline engines with Butanol-gasoline blends. Besides the production, transportation, storage, physical and chemical properties of Butanol-gasoline blends, the combustion characteristics were analyzed as well. As the result Butanol was considered an excellent alternative fuel for gasoline engines, with many unique advantages superior to Natural Gas, LPG, Carbinol and Ethanol, the latter are widely studied at present time. In order to validate the above conclusions in engine application, engine dyno tests were conducted for a gasoline engine fueled with different concentrations of Butanol blend ranging from 10% to up to 35%. Test results showed that the engine power level maintained, without any necessary modifications to the engine, when the Butanol concentration is below 20% by volume. The maximum engine power drops and BSFC goes up slightly, however, when the concentration of Butanol approaches 30%, but those could be recovered by optimizing engine operational parameters, such as advancing the spark timing. Significant improvement to the overall fuel economy is observed in terms of reducing the total fuel energy consumption to produce unit crankshaft energy output. In all the cases investigated engine raw HC and CO emissions are significantly reduced but NOx emissions go up. Finally, approaches to reduce NOx emissions are discussed, with test investigations planed as future work.