Combustion Characteristics of Acetone, Butanol, and Ethanol (ABE) Blended with Diesel in a Compression-Ignition Engine 2016-01-0884

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 acetone-butanol-ethanol mixtures were blended in either a 3:6:1 or 6:3:1 ratio by volume. ABE10 and ABE20 consists of 10% ABE mixture and 90% diesel by volume and 20% ABE and 80% diesel by volume respectively. The results showed that by properly tuning the injection quantity and injection timing in the engine, ABE-diesel mixtures have the potential of improving efficiency and reducing emissions at the same time without sacrificing engine performance.