The Influence of Diesel–Ethanol Fuel Blends on Performance Parameters and Exhaust Emissions: Experimental Investigation and Multi-Objective Optimization of a Diesel Engine

Behdad Shadidi, Hossein Haji Agha Alizade and Gholamhassan Najafi
Additional contact information
Behdad Shadidi: Department of Biosystem Engineering, Faculty of Agriculture, Bu-Ali Sina University, Hamedan 6517838695, Iran
Hossein Haji Agha Alizade: Department of Biosystem Engineering, Faculty of Agriculture, Bu-Ali Sina University, Hamedan 6517838695, Iran
Gholamhassan Najafi: Department of Biosystem Engineering, Faculty of Agriculture, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran 14115111, Iran

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 10, 1-25

Abstract: Compression combustion engines are a source of air pollutants such as HC and Co, but are still widely used throughout the world. The use of renewable fuels such as ethanol, which is a low-carbon fuel, can reduce the emission of these harmful gases from the engine. A fundamental analysis is proposed in this research to experimentally examine the emission characteristics of diesel–ethanol fuel blends. Furthermore, a multi-objective genetic algorithm (e-MOGA) was developed based on the experimental data obtained to fine the most effective or Pareto set of engine emission and performance optimization solutions. So, the optimization problem had two inputs and seven objectives. For this purpose, input variables for the search space were S (rpm) varied in the range of (1600–2000) and E (%) varied in the range of (0–12). These design variables were chosen to be varied in a prespecified range with a lower and upper band as same as experimental conditions. A diesel engine using (DE2, DE4, DE6, DE8, DE10, and DE12) diesel–ethanol fuel blends, at the various speed of 1600 to 2000 rpm, was utilized for the experiment. The findings showed that the use of diesel–ethanol fuel blends decreased the concentration of CO and HC emissions by 3.2–30.6% and 7.01–16.25%, respectively, due to the high oxygen content of ethanol. As opposed to CO and HC emissions, the NOx concentration showed an increase of 7.5–19.6%. This increase was attributed to the high combustion quality in the combustion chamber, which resulted in a higher combustion chamber temperature. The optimization results confirmed that the shape of the Pareto front obtained from multi-objective ϵ-Pareto optimization could be convex, concave, or a combination of both. A new parameter was introduced as emission index or EI for selection of the best solution among the Pareto set of solutions. This parameter had a minimum value of 4.61. The variables levels for this optimum solution were as follows: engine speed = 1977 rpm, ethanol blend ratio = 10%, CO = 0.27%, CO 2 = 6.81%, HC = 3 ppm, NO x = 1573 ppm, SFC = 239 g/kW·h, P = 56 kW, and T = 269.9 N·m. The EI index had a maximum value of 8.26. Conclusively, we can say that the optimization algorithm was successful in minimizing emission index for all ethanol blend ratios, especially at higher engine speeds.

Keywords: diesel-ethanol fuel blends; bioethanol; engine performance; exhaust emission; multi-objective optimization; genetic algorithm (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/10/5379/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/10/5379/ (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:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:10:p:5379-:d:552576

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

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