A study of emission reduction by using alcohol blend fuel for small diesel engine

In practical diesel engines it is to achieve a low emission and low fuel consumption under from low to high load operation conditions. Several techniques were developed for the low emission and high efficiency, such as Homogeneous Charge Compression-Ignition Engines and the blend fuels. Nevertheless, there are only few data available for reducing the emissions and fuel consumption of small diesel engines by using blend fuels. This experiment has been carried out to examine the influence of alcohol blend fuels on combustion characteristics for small diesel engine. The fuels used in this study are light oil (Standard), ethanol, propanol and butanol. The combustion behaviours, such as the emissions in exhaust gas (NOX, CO, CO2, O2 concentration), fuel consumption rate are observed. The main conclusions are as follows: 1) it is possible to control the combustion behaviour by using alcohol blend fuels for small diesel engine, 2) the fuel consumption of at any alcohol blend fuels is bigger than that of light oil, 3) the net thermal efficiency of some alcohol blend fuels (E5P5, P5B5, E5B5) slightly increases than that of light oil, 4) the NOx emissions for all the alcohol blend fuels are smaller than that of light oil, 5) the CO emissions are remarkably bigger than that of light oil under from low to middle engine load without the ethanol 10% addition.