THE JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL TECHNOLOGY

Volume 17, No. 01, Month JANUARY, Year 2021, Pages 65 - 81

Influence of speed on combustion behavior of a compression ignition engine using ethanol blended diesel fuel

Sakda Thongchai, Prateep Chaisermtawan

Abstract Download PDF

This research has studied the combustion characteristics of a compression ignition (CI) engine or diesel engine when using ethanol-blended diesel and biodiesel as the co-solvent when the engine is running at varying speeds. The objective of this study is to bridge the gap between the research and application. Therefore, the ratios of ethanol-diesel-biodiesel are limited by the biodiesel concentration, currently blended in diesel and sold in the market (3, 7 and 10%) because they are the prospective fuels in the near future. The amounts of ethanol are constrained by the phase separation problem. Tri-blend fuels should be homogeneous liquid phase even though the ambient temperature is low as 10 oC. In addition, they should be stored as long as 3 months with phase stability. The four-cylinder commercial diesel engine without any modification and recalibration was used throughout the experiment. Four fuels including 3 ratios of ethanol-diesel-biodiesel (DB3E5, DB7E5 and B10E10) blend and one commercial diesel with 7% of biodiesel (DB7) were used to test. To understand its effect on the influence of each fuel on combustion behaviors, the engine speed has been varied from 1400-2800 rpm. The results found that the combustion characteristics have been changed the same for all test fuels when engine speed was varied. The form of combustion feature is dependent on engine speed and does not rely on test fuels. However, at each engine speed ethanol tends to delay the ignition while adding biodiesel as the additive could advance combustion. The retarded combustion results in a higher rate of heat release and shorter combustion duration.

Keywords

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