Proposal of a Predictive Mixed Experimental- Numerical Approach for Assessing the Performance of Farm Tractor Engines Fuelled with Diesel- Biodiesel-Bioethanol Blends

Marco Bietresato, Carlo Caligiuri, Anna Bolla, Massimiliano Renzi and Fabrizio Mazzetto
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Marco Bietresato: Faculty of Science and Technology, Free University of Bozen/Bolzano, Piazza Università 5, Bolzano I-39100, Italy
Carlo Caligiuri: Faculty of Science and Technology, Free University of Bozen/Bolzano, Piazza Università 5, Bolzano I-39100, Italy
Anna Bolla: Faculty of Science and Technology, Free University of Bozen/Bolzano, Piazza Università 5, Bolzano I-39100, Italy
Massimiliano Renzi: Faculty of Science and Technology, Free University of Bozen/Bolzano, Piazza Università 5, Bolzano I-39100, Italy
Fabrizio Mazzetto: Faculty of Science and Technology, Free University of Bozen/Bolzano, Piazza Università 5, Bolzano I-39100, Italy

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 12, 1-45

Abstract: The effect of biofuel blends on the engine performance and emissions of agricultural machines can be extremely complex to predict even if the properties and the effects of the pure substances in the blends can be sourced from the literature. Indeed, on the one hand, internal combustion engines (ICEs) have a high intrinsic operational complexity; on the other hand, biofuels show antithetic effects on engine performance and present positive or negative interactions that are difficult to determine a priori. This study applies the Response Surface Methodology (RSM), a numerical method typically applied in other disciplines (e.g., industrial engineering) and for other purposes (e.g., set-up of production machines), to analyse a large set of experimental data regarding the mechanical and environmental performances of an ICE used to power a farm tractor. The aim is twofold: i) to demonstrate the effectiveness of RSM in quantitatively assessing the effects of biofuels on a complex system like an ICE; ii) to supply easy-to-use correlations for the users to predict the effect of biofuel blends on performance and emissions of tractor engines. The methodology showed good prediction capabilities and yielded interesting outcomes. The effects of biofuel blends and physical fuel parameters were adopted to study the engine performance. Among all possible parameters depending on the fuel mixture, the viscosity of a fuel blend demonstrated a high statistical significance on some system responses directly related to the engine mechanical performances. This parameter can constitute an interesting indirect estimator of the mechanical performances of an engine fuelled with such blend, while it showed poor accuracy in predicting the emissions of the ICE (NO x , CO concentration and opacity of the exhaust gases) due to a higher influence of the chemical composition of the fuel blend on these parameters; rather, the blend composition showed a much higher accuracy in the assessment of the mechanical performance of the ICE.

Keywords: farm tractor; diesel engine; response surface method; biodiesel; bioethanol; kinematic viscosity; engine performances; CO and NO x emissions; exhaust gases opacity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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