Co-effects of fuel research octane number and ethanol injection ratio on dual-fuel spark-ignition engine

The combustion and emission characteristics of a dual-fuel spark-ignition engine with direct injection of gasoline surrogates and port injection of ethanol were studied. Toluene reference fuel with different research octane number namely TRF#1, TRF#2, TRF#3, TRF#4 and TRF#5 were employed as gasoline surrogates, in which TRF#1 with high octane number was to simulate commercial gasoline under direct-injection spark-ignition mode as comparison. For dual-fuel spark-ignition mode, the ethanol port-injection ratios were 21%, 25%, 29%, 32% and 35%, respectively. The results demonstrated that with the increase of the ethanol ratio, the knock-limited spark timing was advanced gradually. The emissions of hydrocarbon, ethane, propylene, isopentane, cyclohexane and aromatic hydrocarbons reduced while CO, NOx, ethylene, acetaldehyde and ethanol increased. Compared to TRF#1 in direct-injection spark-ignition mode, the indicated thermal efficiencies of dual-fuel spark-ignition mode were slightly lower under most test conditions. When direct injection of TRF#3, TRF#4, TRF#5 and the ethanol ratio was higher than 29%, some of the indicated thermal efficiencies of the engine were consistent with or higher than that of TRF#1 in direct-injection spark-ignition mode. Based on dual-fuel spark-ignition mode and with the assistance of port injection of ethanol, the indicated thermal efficiency of low research octane number fuels was comparable to that of TRF#1 in direct-injection spark-ignition mode.