An investigation of bio/synthetic fuel blends on a multi-cylinder compression ignition engine
2022-01-0531
03/29/2022
- Event
- Content
- Oxygenated, low energy-density fuels have the potential to reduce engine-out NOx and soot emissions. Additionally, synthetic fuels can provide a pathway to reach carbon neutral utilization of hydrocarbon-based fuels in IC engines. Oxymethylene dimethyl ether (OME) is one such synthetic, low energy density fuel, derived from sustainable sources that in combination with conventional fossil fuels with higher energy content, has the potential to reduce NOx emissions below the US and EU VI legislative limits while maintaining ultra-low soot and CO2 emissions. The objective of this work is to investigate and compare the performance, emissions and efficiency of a modern multi-cylinder diesel engine under conventional high temperature combustion (HTC) with 3 different fuels; 1) 10% OME fuel, blended with conventional ultra-low sulphur diesel (OME10), 2) EU bio-diesel, made from vegetable oils with 10% renewable energy source (RES) content (EU B10), and conventional diesel in North America (B0). Extensive dynamometer tests have been carried out to cover a wide range of engine operating conditions (speed/load) to allow a comprehensive comparison with the 3 fuels. The tests results indicate that OME10 is very effective in reducing soot emissions under high load operation. An improvement in the NOx-soot trade-off is observed at mid-to-high intake dilution with exhaust gas recirculation while no discernible difference is observed at low dilution levels. The burning characteristics such as combustion phasing and duration, and exhaust gas temperatures with OME10 are similar to that of B10 and B0. This is important to ensure compatibility with the current exhaust aftertreatment systems. While the brake specific fuel consumption increases with OME10 due to the higher oxygen and lower gravimetric heating value compared to conventional diesel fuel, the CO2 emissions are similar. This implies that a reduced supplemental fuel requirement for exhaust aftertreatment will reduce the tail-pipe CO2 emissions with OME10.
- Citation
- Asad, U., Ramos, M., and Tjong, J., "An investigation of bio/synthetic fuel blends on a multi-cylinder compression ignition engine," SAE Technical Paper 2022-01-0531, 2022, .