Optimization of alcohol-gasoline blended fuel for improving performance and reducing exhaust emission of engine / Md. Masum Billah

• Main Author: Md. Masum, Billah
• Format: Thesis
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: T Technology (General); TJ Mechanical engineering and machinery
• Online Access: http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/8765/4/KGA_110036.pdf; http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/8765/

Alcohols are potential renewable alternatives to gasoline because of their bio-based origin. Alcohols with higher carbon number (such as propanol, butanol, pentanol and hexanol) have ability to dissolve properly with gasoline as like as ethanol. They possess higher energy content, octane number and can displace more petroleum gasoline than that of conventional ethanol-gasoline blended fuel. Therefore, this study focuses on improvement of different physicochemical properties using multiple alcohols at different proportion compared to that of the conventional ethanol gasoline blend. To optimize the properties of multiple alcohol-gasoline blends, properties of each fuel were measured. An optimization tool of Microsoft Excel “Solver” was used to find out the optimum blend. Based on properties test result, three optimum blends ratios were selected which possessed maximum heating value (MaxHV), maximum research octane number (MaxRON) and maximum petroleum displacement (MaxPD). Here, the MaxHV is the blend of 8.58% Propanol, 5.7% Butanol, 1% Pentanol and 84.72% Gasoline; and the MaxRON is the blend of 19.57% Propanol and 80.43% Gasoline; and the MaxPD is the blend of 4.8% Ethanol, 9.61% Propanol, 5.44% Pentanol and 80.15% Gasoline. The results from the above three optimized blended fuels were compared with two conventional fuels such as gasoline and E15 (15% Ethanol + 85% Gasoline). A four-cylinder spark ignition engine was used to test above mentioned five (5) fuels. The engine was tested with different load and engine speed conditions. The collected parametric results were: engine torque, brake power, brake thermal efficiency (BTE), brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC), CO, CO2, HC and NOx emission. From test results, it can be found that all optimized blends performed well in SI engine. Among the optimized blends, MaxRON blend exhibits highest BTE and improvement in BSFC than that of E15. In terms of engine emission, MaxHV blend significant reduction of CO, HC and NOx emission is achieved than that of E15 as well as gasoline, however, CO2 emission is increased.