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Bio-butanol has been widely investigated as a promising alternative fuel. However, the main issues preventing the industrial-scale production of butanol is its relatively low production efficiency and high cost of production. Acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE), the intermediate product in the ABE fermentation process for producing bio-butanol, has attracted a lot of interest as an alternative fuel because it not only preserves the advantages of oxygenated fuels, but also lowers the cost of fuel recovery for individual component during fermentation. If ABE could be directly used for clean combustion, the separation costs would be eliminated which save an enormous amount of time and money in the production chain of bio-butanol.

Dual-fuel combustion combining a premixed charge of compressed natural gas (CNG) and a pilot injection of diesel fuel offer the potential to reduce diesel fuel consumption and drastically reduce soot emissions. In this study, dual-fuel combustion using methane ignited with a pilot injection of No. 2 diesel fuel, was studied in a single cylinder diesel engine with optical access. Experiments were performed at a CNG substitution rate of 70% CNG (based on energy) over a wide range of equivalence ratios of the premixed charge, as well as different diesel injection strategies (single and double injection). A color high-speed camera was used in order to identify and distinguish between lean-premixed methane combustion and diffusion combustion in dual-fuel combustion. The effect of multiple diesel injections is also investigated optically as a means to enhance flame propagation towards the center of the combustion chamber.

Due to the increasing consumption of fossil fuels, alternative fuels in internal combustion engines have attracted a lot of attention in recent years. Ethanol is the most common alternative fuel used in spark ignition (SI) engines due to its advantages of biodegradability, positively impacting emissions reduction as well as octane number improvement. Meanwhile, acetone is well-known as one of the industrial waste solvents for synthetic fibers and most plastic materials. In comparison to ethanol, acetone has a number of more desirable properties for being a viable alternative fuel such as its higher energy density, heating value and volatility.

Acetone-Butanol-Ethanol (ABE) is an intermediate product in the ABE fermentation process for producing bio-butanol. As an additive for diesel, it has been shown to improve spray evaporation, improve fuel atomization, enhance air-fuel mixing, and enhance combustion as a whole. The typical compositions of ABE are in a volumetric ratio of 3:6:1 or 6:3:1. From previous studies done in a constant volume chamber, it was observed that the presence of additional acetone in the blend caused advancement in the combustion phasing, but too much acetone content led to an increase in soot emission during combustion. The objective of this research was to investigate the combustion of these mixtures in a diesel engine. The experiments were conducted in an AVL 5402 single-cylinder diesel engine at different speeds and different loads to study component effects on the various engine conditions. The fuels tested in these experiments were D100, ABE(3:6:1)10, ABE(3:6:1)20, ABE(6:3:1)10, and ABE(6:3:1)20.

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.

In order to comply with the stringent emission regulations, many researchers have been focusing on diesel-compressed natural gas (CNG) dual fuel operation in compression ignition (CI) engines. The diesel-CNG dual fuel operation mode has the potential to reduce both the soot and NOx emissions; however, the thermal efficiency is generally lower than that of the pure diesel operation, especially under the low and medium load conditions. The current experimental work investigates the potential of using diesel-1-butanol blends as the pilot fuel to improve the engine performance and emissions. Fuel blends of B0 (pure diesel), B10 (90% diesel and 10% 1-butanol by volume) and B20 (80% diesel and 20% 1-butanol) with 70% CNG substitution were compared based on an equivalent input energy at an engine speed of 1200 RPM. The results indicated that the diesel-1-butanol pilot fuel can lead to a more homogeneous mixture due to the longer ignition delay.

To face the challenges of fossil fuel shortage and air pollution problems, there is growing interest in the potential usage of alternative fuels such as bio-ethanol and bio-butanol in internal combustion engines. The literature shows that the acetone in the Acetone-Butanol-Ethanol (ABE) blends plays an important part in improving the combustion performance and emissions, owing to its higher volatility. In order to study the effects of acetone addition into commercial gasoline, this study focuses on the differences in combustion, performance and emission characteristics of a port-injection spark-ignition engine fueled with pure gasoline (G100), ethanol-containing gasoline (E30) and acetone-ethanol-gasoline blends (AE30 at A:E volumetric ratio of 3:1). The tests were conducted at 1200RPM with the default calibration (for gasoline), at 3 bar and 5 bar BMEP under various equivalence ratios.

Measurement on turbulent premixed CH4/H2/air flames was studied experimentally. Hydrogen blending ratio is defined as the ratio of hydrogen to fuel, while CO2 dilution ratio is defined as the mole fraction of CO2 to those of mixture. Hydrogen blending ratios up to 0.2 and CO2 dilution ratios up to 0.1 were studied. OH profile of the instantaneous flame front was detected using the OH-PLIF visualizations on a turbulent Bunsen burner. 500 OH-PLIF images were used to obtain the turbulent burning velocity and calculate flame surface density, and 280 images was used to calculate the local curvature radius.

Due to serious energy crisis and pollution problem, interest in research of the alternative fuels is increasing over the world. Alcohol fuels are always considered to be promising alternative fuels. Lower alcohols owning high octane number is good octane enhancer for SI (Spark ignition) engine, however is difficult to be used in CI (Compression Ignition) engines. Higher alcohols like pentanol with higher energy content, poor water solubility and higher cetane number are good choice for the CI engines. In this study, laminar flame behaviors of ethanol-air, n-butanol-air and n-pentanol-air mixtures at 393 K and 0.1 MPa are compared and analyzed with the spherical propagating flames. Comparison of the laminar flame speeds measured in the previous studies (Li et al.) show that laminar flame speed of ethanol is the fastest with slower flame speed of n-butanol and n-pentanol at lean mixture. At rich mixture, three alcohols present very close values.

Ignition delay times of Diethyl Ether (DEE) were measured behind reflected shock waves for the temperatures from 1050 to 1600 K, pressures of 1.2, 4 and 16 atm and equivalence ratios of 0.5 and 1.0. Result shows that the ignition delay times increase with the increase of the equivalence ratio and the decrease of the pressure. The only literature DEE mechanism (Yasunaga et al. model) was employed to simulate the experimental data and result shows that the model gives reasonable prediction on lean mixtures, while the prediction on stoichiometric mixtures is slightly higher. Sensitivity analysis was conducted to pick out the key reactions in the process of DEE ignition at high and low pressures, respectively. Reaction pathway analysis shows that the consumption of DEE is dominated by the H-abstraction reactions. Through linear analysis, a correlation for the DEE ignition data was obtained.

The specific heat ratio used in heat release calculation plays an important role and the mass fraction burned is also a crucial parameter in thermodynamics analysis for engine combustion. A research of high methane fraction natural gas was investigated in a constant volume combustion vessel at different initial conditions. Results show that with the increase of the initial pressure, the specific heat ratio is decreased, and the time of the mixture burned up is postponed, while the peak heat release ratio is increased. With the increase of the methane fraction, the parameters have the opposite behavior. With the increase of the initial temperature, the specific heat ratio is decreased, and the time when the mixture is burned up is accelerated, and the peak heat release ratio has no obviously difference. With the increase of the dilution ratio or the CO2/N2 ratio, the specific heat ratio is decreased, and the peak heat release heat ratio is decreased.

Alcohols, especially n-butanol, have received a lot of attention as potential fuels and have shown to be a possible alternative to pure gasoline. The main issue preventing butanol's use in modern engines is its relatively high cost of production. ABE, the intermediate product in the ABE fermentation process for producing bio-butanol, is being studied as an alternative fuel because it not only preserves the advantages of oxygenated fuels, but also lowers the cost of fuel recovery for individual component during fermentation. With the development of advanced ABE fermentation technology, the volumetric percentage of acetone, butanol and ethanol in the bio-solvents can be precisely controlled. In this respect, it is desirable to estimate the performance of different ABE blends to determine the best blend and optimize the production process accordingly.

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).

Performance and particulate emissions of a modern common-rail and turbocharged diesel engine fueled with diesel and biodiesel fuels were comparatively studied. An electrical low-pressure impactor (ELPI) was employed to measure particle size distribution and number concentration. Two biodiesel fuels, BDFs (biodiesel from soybean oil) and BDFc (biodiesel from used cooking oil), as well as ultra-low sulfur diesel were used. The study shows that biodiesels give higher thermal efficiency than diesel. Biodiesels give obviously lower exhaust gas temperature than diesel under high engine speed. The differences in fuel consumption, thermal efficiency and exhaust gas temperature between BDFs and BDFc are negligible. The first peaks of heat release rate for biodiesels are lower than that of diesel, while the second peaks are higher and advanced for biodiesels. BDFs show slightly slower heat release than BDFc during the first heat release stage at low engine speed.

Experiments were conducted in a turbocharged, high-pressure common rail diesel engine to investigate particulate emissions from the engine fueled with biodiesel and diesel blends. An electrical low-pressure impactor (ELPI) was employed to measure the particle size distribution and number concentration. Heated dilution was used to suppress nuclei mode particles and focus on accumulation mode particles. The experiment was carried out at five engine loads and two engine speeds. Biodiesel fractions of 10%, 20%, 40%, 60% and 80% in volume were tested. The study shows that most of the particles are distributed with their diameters between 0.02 and 0.2 μm, and the number concentration becomes quite small for the particles with the diameters larger than 0.2 μm. With the increase of biodiesel fraction, engine speed and/or engine load, particle number concentration decreases significantly, while the particle size distribution varies little.

Alcohols, because of their potential to be produced from renewable sources and their characteristics suitable for clean combustion, are considered potential fuels which can be blended with fossil-based gasoline for use in internal combustion engines. As such, n-butanol has received a lot of attention in this regard and has shown to be a possible alternative to pure gasoline. The main issue preventing butanol's use in modern engines is its relatively high cost of production. Acetone-Butanol-Ethanol (ABE) fermentation is one of the major methods to produce bio-butanol. The goal of this study is to investigate the combustion characteristics of the intermediate product in butanol production, namely ABE, and hence evaluate its potential as an alternative fuel. Acetone, n-butanol and ethanol were blended in a 3:6:1 volume ratio and then splash blended with pure ethanol-free gasoline with volumetric ratios of 0%, 20%, 40% to create various fuel blends.

Acetone-Butanol-Ethanol (ABE), an intermediate product in the ABE fermentation process for producing bio-butanol, is considered a promising alternative fuel because it not only preserves the advantages of oxygenated fuel which typically emit less pollutants compared to conventional diesel, but also lowers the cost of fuel recovery for each individual component during the fermentation. With the development of advanced ABE fermentation technology, the volumetric percentage of acetone, butanol and ethanol in the bio-solvents can be precisely controlled. In this respect, it is desirable to estimate the performance of different ABE blends to determine the best blend and optimize the production process accordingly. ABE fuels with different component ratio, (A: B: E: 6:3:1; 3:6:1; 0:10:0, vol. %), were blended with diesel and tested in a constant volume chamber.

In this study, the ignition delay times of DME/n-C4H10 fuel blends (neat DME, 50/50 and neat n-C4H10) diluted with argon were measured behind reflected shock waves. The experiments were performed in the temperature range of 1250 - 1600 K, at pressure of 2.0 MPa and equivalence ratios from 0.5 to 2.0. A latest kinetic mechanism NUIG Aramco Mech 1.3 was validated against the present ignition data and used to conducted chemical kinetic analysis. Different equivalence-ratio-dependent was exhibited at different temperature regimes for DME, n-C4H10, and their blend. Fuel flux analysis, sensitive analysis and mole fraction analysis were carried out for understanding the interaction between the ignition chemistries of DME and n-C4H10.

Natural gas has become an attractive alternative for diesel fuel due to its higher octane number, richer reserves and lower price. It has been utilized in compression ignition engines to obtain a higher thermal efficiency compared with spark ignition engines. However, its relatively higher auto-ignition temperature increases the difficulty of compression-ignition based on present hardware devices. One optimal ignition method is that a very small quantity of diesel fuel as the only ignition resource pilot-ignites the lean natural gas-air mixture. This micro diesel pilot-ignited natural gas premixed charge compression ignition (DPING-PCCI) combustion strategy is easy to implement without major hardware modifications, and can significantly reduce the NOx and particle mass emissions from diesel engines. Although the DPING-PCCI has so many advantages, it suffers from poor engine stability and high ultrafine particles emissions at part loads.