Nitrogen Oxides Emissions from a Diesel Engine Fuelled with Water-Diesel Microemulsions

In this study, an experiment was conducted to examine the AVL research diesel engine using two kinds of waterdiesel (W-D) fuel microemulsions. These W-D mixtures contained 3.5 and 7.0% by volume (%, v/v) of distilled water dispersed in regular diesel fuel meeting the requirements of the EN590 standard. The engine was tested under the conditions of low, moderate and higher loads. This research was focused on the emission characteristics of nitrogen dioxide (NO2 ) and nitrogen monoxide (NO). Cumulative emission of NOx was also analyzed before being further discussed. The obtained results of this study showed that the addition of distilled water to the regular diesel fuel has a minor effect on the variation of the nitrogen oxides emission. It was confirmed that NO is the main component of NOx detected in the exhaust stream of the AVL engine fuelled with all tested fuels. It proves that the thermal mechanism of the nitrogen oxides formation was dominant in the combustion process. Moreover, it was found that the addition of water dispersed as microemulsion in diesel fuel had a minor effect on the reduction of the NOx emission.