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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.

Recent research has shown that butanol, instead of ethanol, has the potential of introducing a more suitable blend in diesel engines. This is because butanol has properties similar to current transportation fuels in comparison to ethanol. However, the main downside is the high cost of the butanol production process. Acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) is an intermediate product of the fermentation process of butanol production. By eliminating the separation and purification processes, using ABE directly in diesel blends has the potential of greatly decreasing the overall cost for fuel production. This could lead to a vast commercial use of ABE-diesel blends on the market. Much research has been done in the past five years concerning spray and combustion processes of both neat ABE and ABE-diesel mixtures. Additionally, different compositions of ABE mixtures had been characterized with a similar experimental approach.

The primary breakup of a planar liquid sheet produced by an air-blast atomizer was studied through numerical simulations, in order to reveal physical mechanisms involved during this process. The reliability of simulations was verified by comparing the macroscopic parameters, e.g. breakup time and spatial growth rate, with experimental data. Shear instability and RT (Rayleigh-Taylor) instability were found to play important roles during the primary breakup. By analyzing the acceleration of a fluid parcel within liquid sheet using Discrete Particle Method, and measuring the wave length of transverse unstable wave, RT instability was found to be partially responsible for transverse instability. The predictions of LISA (Linearized Instability Sheet Atomization) model on breakup time were compared to experiments, and obvious differences were found to exist.