An Experimental Study on the Potential Usage of Acetone as an Oxygenate Additive in PFI SI Engines

Lei Meng, Chunnian Zeng, Yuqiang Li, Karthik Nithyanandan, Timothy H. Lee and Chia-fon Lee
Additional contact information
Lei Meng: School of Information Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, China
Chunnian Zeng: School of Information Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, China
Yuqiang Li: School of Energy Science and Engineering, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China
Karthik Nithyanandan: Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA
Timothy H. Lee: Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA
Chia-fon Lee: Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA

Energies, 2016, vol. 9, issue 4, 1-20

Abstract: To face the challenges of fossil fuel shortage and stringent emission norms, there is growing interest in the potential usage of alternative fuels such as bio-ethanol and bio-butanol in internal combustion engines. More recently, Acetone–Butanol–Ethanol (ABE), the intermediate product of bio-butanol fermentation, has been gaining a lot of attention as an alternative fuel. The literature shows that the acetone in the ABE blends plays an important part in improving the combustion performance and emissions, owing to its higher volatility. Acetone and ethanol are the low-value byproducts during bio-butanol production, so using acetone and ethanol as fuel additives may have both economic and environmental benefits. This study focuses on the differences in combustion, performance and emission characteristics of a port-injection spark-ignition engine fueled with pure gasoline (G100), ethanol-containing gasoline (E10 and E30) and acetone-ethanol-gasoline blends (AE10 and AE30 at A:E volumetric ratio of 3:1). The tests were conducted at 1200 RPM, under gasoline maximum brake torque (MBT) at 3 bar and 5 bar brake mean effective pressure (BMEP). Performance and emission data were measured under various equivalence ratios. Based on the comparison of combustion phasing, brake thermal efficiency, brake specific fuel consumption and various emissions of different fuels, it was found that using acetone as an oxygenate additive with the default ECU calibration (for gasoline) maintained the thermal efficiency and showed lower unburned HC emissions.

Keywords: acetone; ethanol; gasoline; PFI; SI engine (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: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/9/4/256/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/9/4/256/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:9:y:2016:i:4:p:256-:d:66951

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().