An Experimental Study on Effects of Fuel Oxygenates on Diesel Engine Combustion

An experimental study on three different oxygenated fuels, namely Oxy1, Oxy2, and Oxy3 respectively, was conducted on both an optical single cylinder DI diesel engine, to investigate their effects on spray, ignition, and combustion development. Those three fuels were derived from the conventional diesel fuel (Finnish City diesel summer grade) by blending Rapeseed Methyl Ester (RME) or Diglyme and Butyl-Diglyme of different quantities to make their oxygen content to be 3%, 3%, and 9%, respectively. The experimental results with three fuels named Oxy1, Oxy2, and Oxy3 show that the fuel spray development was not affected apparently by the oxygenating. Compared with the base fuel, the ignition delay to main injection was shortened by 10%, 19% and 38%, respectively. Oxygen content in the three oxygenated fuels lowered the smoke and unburned hydrocarbon emissions, with NOx and fuel consumption penalties (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the Engineering Department, Lancaster University