RESEARCH ARTICLE

Influence of cetane number improver on performance and emissions of a common-rail diesel engine fueled with biodiesel-methanol blend

  • Wu YU ,
  • Gen CHEN ,
  • Zuohua HUANG
Expand
  • State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China

Received date: 18 Apr 2011

Accepted date: 20 Jun 2011

Published date: 05 Dec 2011

Copyright

2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

Abstract

In this paper, the effect of cetane number (CN) improver on performance and emissions, including particulate number concentration and size distribution, of a turbocharged, common-rail diesel engine fueled with biodiesel-methanol were studied. Two volume fractions (0.3% and 0.6%) of CN improver were added to BM30 (30% of methanol in the biodiesel-methanol blend) in the experiment. The results show that, compared with those of biodiesel-methanol blend, the peak value of cylinder pressure increases, the second peak of heat release rate decreases, the start of second heat release are advanced, and the fuel economy and thermal efficiency are improved when CN improver is added to biodiesel-methanol blend. Besides, CO and HC emissions decrease, NOx emission varies little and smoke emissions increase slightly. Moreover, exhaust particles of BM30 mainly distribute in nano-size range. Furthermore, particle number concentration decreases and peak of size distribution profile shifts toward large size direction.

Cite this article

Wu YU , Gen CHEN , Zuohua HUANG . Influence of cetane number improver on performance and emissions of a common-rail diesel engine fueled with biodiesel-methanol blend[J]. Frontiers in Energy, 2011 , 5(4) : 412 -418 . DOI: 10.1007/s11708-011-0163-9

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 50821064).
1
Lapuerta M, Armas O, Rodríguez-Fernández J. Effect of biodiesel fuels on diesel engine emissions. Progress in Energy and Combustion Science, 2008, 34(2): 198–223

DOI

2
Demirbas A. Progress and recent trends in biodiesel fuels. Energy Conversion and Management, 2009, 50(1): 14–34

DOI

3
Murugesan A, Umarani C, Subramanian R, Nedunchezhian N. Bio-diesel as an alternative fuel for diesel engines—a review. Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2009, 13(3): 653–662

DOI

4
Suh H K, Roh H G, Lee C S. Spray and combustion characteristics of biodiesel/diesel blended fuel in a direct injection common-rail diesel engine. Journal of Engineering for Gas Turbines and Power, 2008, 130(3): 032807–032809

DOI

5
Huang Z H, Lu H B, Jiang D M, Zeng K, Liu B, Zhang J, Wang X B. Engine performance and emissions of a compression ignition engine operating on the diesel-methanol blends. Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Part D, Journal of Automobile Engineering, 2004, 218(4): 435–447

DOI

6
Cheung C S, Zhu L, Huang Z. Regulated and unregulated emissions from a diesel engine fueled with biodiesel and biodiesel blended with methanol. Atmospheric Environment, 2009, 43(32): 4865–4872

DOI

7
Zhu L, Cheung C S, Zhang W G, Huang Z. Influence of methanol-biodiesel blends on the particulate emissions of a direct injection diesel engine. Aerosol Science and Technology, 2010, 44(5): 362–369

DOI

8
Zhu L, Cheung C S, Zhang W G, Huang Z. Emissions characteristics of a diesel engine operating on biodiesel and biodiesel blended with ethanol and methanol. Science of the Total Environment, 2010, 408(4): 914–921

DOI PMID

9
Lu X C, Yang J G, Zhang W G, Huang Z. Effect of cetane number improver on heat release rate and emissions of high speed diesel engine fueled with ethanol-diesel blend fuel. Fuel, 2004, 83(14,15): 2013–2020

10
Lü X C, Yang J G, Zhang W G , Huang Z. Improving the combustion and emissions of direct injection compression ignition engines using oxygenated fuel additives combined with a cetane number improver. Energy & Fuels, 2005, 19(5): 1879–1888

DOI

11
Li W, Ren Y, Wang X B, Miao H Y, Jiang D M, Huang Z H. Combustion characteristics of a compression ignition engine fuelled with diesel-ethanol blends. Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Part D, Journal of Automobile Engineering, 2008, 222(2): 265–274

DOI

12
Liu S H, Zhu Z, Zhang Z J, Gao G X, Wei Y J. Effect of a cetane number (CN) improver on combustion and emission characteristics of a compression-ignition (CI) engine fueled with an ethanol-diesel blend. Energy & Fuels, 2010, 24(4): 2449–2454

DOI

13
Huang Z H, Lu H B, Jiang D M, Zeng K, Liu B, Zhang J Q, Wang X B. Combustion characteristics and heat release analysis of a compression ignition engine operating on a diesel/methanol blend. Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Part D, Journal of Automobile Engineering, 2004, 218(9): 1011–1024

DOI

14
Tsolakis A. Effects on particle size distribution from the diesel engine operating on rme-biodiesel with EGR. Energy & Fuels, 2006, 20(4): 1418–1424

DOI

15
Zhao H, Ge Y S, Wang X C, Tan J W, Wang A J, You K W. Effects of fuel sulfur content and diesel oxidation catalyst on PM emitted from light-duty diesel engine. Energy & Fuels, 2010, 24(2): 985–991

DOI

Outlines

/