Experimental investigation of n-butanol/diesel fuel blends and n-butanol fumigation – Evaluation of engine performance, exhaust emissions, heat release and flammability analysis

Highlights: • n-Butanol/diesel fuel blends and n-butanol fumigation investigated experimentally. • Flammability analysis of n-butanol performed. • Smoke decreases significantly for n-butanol/diesel fuel blends and n-butanol fumigation. • HC emission increases significantly for n-butanol/diesel fuel blends and n-butanol fumigation. • 2% n-Butanol/diesel fuel blend decreases slightly BSFC. - Abstract: The aim of this paper is to investigate and compare the effects of n-butanol/diesel fuel blends (nBDFBs) and n-butanol fumigation (nBF) on the engine performance and exhaust emissions in a turbocharged automobile diesel engine. Also, evaluations based on heat release and flammability analysis have been done. Experiments have been performed for various n-nBDFBs and nBF at different engine speeds and loads. For nBDFBs and nBF tests; nB2, nB4 and nB6 and nBF2, nBF4 and nBF6n-butanol percentages were selected. Here, for example nB2 and nBF2 contains 2% n-butanol and 98% diesel fuel by volume respectively. The test results showed that smoke decreases significantly by applying both of these two methods. However, decrement ratios of smoke for fumigation method are higher than that of blend method. NO_x emission decreases for nB2, but it increases for nB4 and nB6 at selected engine speeds and loads. NO_x emission decreases generally for nBF. For nB2 and nB4, BSFC decreases slightly but it increases for nB6. For nBF, BSFC increases at all of the test conditions. Adding n-butanol to diesel fuel becomes expensive for two methods. For nBDFBs, heat release rate (HRR) diagrams exhibit similar typical characteristic to NDF. However, for nBF, HRR shows slightly different pattern from NDF and a double peak is observed in the HRR diagram. The first peak occurs earlier than NDF and the second peak takes places later. In addition, this diagram shows that the first peak becomes larger and the second peak diminishes as n-butanol ratio is increased. Because of pilot injection of diesel fuel, it can be seen that diesel fuel could be exceed the lower flammability limit and self ignition could be occur. Thus, pre-combustion occurs at the interval of ∼(−20 to −10) °CA