Experimental study on DI diesel engine with acetylene in dual fuel mode with DEE as an ignition enhancer

Fossils fuels are currently the dominant global source for air pollution and their combustion is posing a serious threat to clean environment. The economic cost of the effect of this pollution has been estimated at 0.4% of GDP for a developing country. The limits for reduction in the emissions levels have been agreed by various nations in concordance with the Kyoto protocol. As far as low emission fuels are concerned, gaseous fuels appear to be capable of performing a prominent role in reducing emissions. Various gaseous fuels such as biogas, producer gas, hydrogen, acetylene, LPG and CNG are suitable for IC engines. In the present research, a genuine effort is made to establish that acetylene can be taken as a substitute fuel for diesel in dual fuel mode. A 4.4 kW single cylinder, air-cooled diesel engine has been taken up for the present study. As the gaseous fuel suffers poor combustion in diesel engines, especially at part loads, DEE which is considered as a most renewable fuel was injected into the port as a combustion enhancer at the rate of 100 g/h, 150 g/h and 200 g/h adopting carburetion technique at the maximum gas flow rate of 390 g/h of acetylene gas. Finally, the experiment yielded the maximum diesel energy substitution of 49% along with DEE. In this study, the performance, combustion and emission characteristics of acetylene DEE have been analysed. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.