Alcohol fuels for spark-ignition engines: Performance, efficiency, and emission effects at mid to high blend rates for ternary mixtures

James W.G. Turner, Andrew G.J. Lewis, Sam Akehurst, Chris J. Brace, Sebastian Verhelst, Jeroen Vancoillie, Louis Sileghem, Felix C.P. Leach, Peter P. Edwards

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

13 Citations (SciVal)

Abstract

This paper follows on from an earlier publication on high-blend-rate binary gasoline-alcohol mixtures and reports results for some equivalent ternary fuels from several investigation streams. In the present work, new findings are presented for high-load operation in a dedicated boosted multi-cylinder engine test facility, for operation in modified production engines, for knock performance in a single-cylinder test engine, and for exhaust particulate emissions at part load using both the prototype multi-cylinder engine and a separate single-cylinder engine. The wide variety of test engines employed have several differences, including their fuel delivery strategies. This range of engine specifications is considered beneficial with regard to the “drop-in fuel” conjecture, since the results presented here bear out the contention, already established in the literature, that when specified according to the known ternary blending rules, such fuels fundamentally perform identically to their binary equivalents in terms of engine performance, and outperform standard gasolines in terms of efficiency. However, in the present work, some differences in particulate emissions performance in direct-injection engines have been found at light load for the tested fuels, with a slight increase in particulate number observed with higher methanol contents than lower. A hypothesis is developed to explain this result but in general it was found that these fuels do not significantly affect PN emissions from such engines. As a result, this investigation supplies further evidence that renewable fuels can be introduced simply into the existing vehicle fleet, with the inherent backwards compatibility that this brings too.

Original languageEnglish
Article number6390
JournalEnergies
Volume13
Issue number23
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 3 Dec 2020

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Funding: Elements of the reported research took place as part of the “Ultra Boost for Economy” project part funded by the Technology Strategy Board, now Innovate UK, the United Kingdom’s innovation agency; their support is similarly gratefully acknowledged. J. Vancoillie and L. Sileghem gratefully acknowledge fellowships from the Research Foundation—Flanders (FWO09/ASP/030 and FWO11/ASP/056).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

Funding

Funding: Elements of the reported research took place as part of the “Ultra Boost for Economy” project part funded by the Technology Strategy Board, now Innovate UK, the United Kingdom’s innovation agency; their support is similarly gratefully acknowledged. J. Vancoillie and L. Sileghem gratefully acknowledge fellowships from the Research Foundation—Flanders (FWO09/ASP/030 and FWO11/ASP/056).

Keywords

  • Alcohols
  • E-fuels
  • Gasoline-alcohol blends
  • Renewable fuels
  • Ternary blends

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
  • Fuel Technology
  • Energy Engineering and Power Technology
  • Energy (miscellaneous)
  • Control and Optimization
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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