Understanding the ignition delay of E20 gasolines and E20 gasoline surrogates

Roger F. Cracknell, Filimonas Kaliafetis, Vaibhav Patel, Henry J. Curran

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The autoignition behaviour of E20 gasolines is investigated experimentally using both a rapid compression machine and a high-pressure shock tube. A detailed chemical kinetic model is employed to simulate the data. Four E20 gasolines are studied, two of which are formulated from refinery streams, thereby representing a “real” fuel, while the other two are surrogate blends, which can also be modelled, and which are designed to approximately represent the RON and MON of the fuels made from the refinery streams. The measured ignition delay times (IDTs) of the surrogate fuels are always measured to be shorter than those of the “real” fuels at all temperatures and equivalence ratios, although this is most apparent in the negative temperature coefficient (NTC) regime. This deviation can be, at least partly, explained by the fact that the RON of the surrogates is slightly lower than the RON of the corresponding “real” fuels. For the surrogate fuels, there is an under-prediction of IDTs using the Galway GS_MechV1 chemical kinetic mechanism compared to the experimental results. This under-prediction is found to be more prominent at an equivalence ratio of 0.5. A modification to the original surrogates was made which increased the RON of the surrogate fuels and brought the simulated IDTs closer to the experimental measurements.

Original languageEnglish
Article number134111
JournalFuel
Volume386
Early online date30 Dec 2024
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 30 Dec 2024
Externally publishedYes

Data Availability Statement

Data will be made available on request.

Acknowledgements

The authors are extremely grateful to Dr. Sandro Gail for his help in defining the programme and arranging the dispatch of the fuel and surrogate samples. The authors extend their special thanks to Dr. Ahmed Abd El-Sabor Mohamed, Dr. Shijun Dong and Dr. Sergio Martinez for their valuable advice and critiques. They would also like to thank Dr. Patrick Meier for designing and manufacturing the piston heads. Finally, the authors would like to express their appreciation to Dr. Sergio Martinez for providing access to the ST, RCM, and Flux analysis codes in Python-Cantera.

Funding

The authors from the University of Galway would like to express their gratitude for funding this research work to Shell Research Ltd. and Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) via project number 16/SP/3829. They also acknowledge the Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC) for granting access to computational resources under project number ngche114c.

Keywords

  • E20 gasoline
  • Ethanol
  • Gasoline surrogate
  • Ignition delay time

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Chemical Engineering
  • Fuel Technology
  • Energy Engineering and Power Technology
  • Organic Chemistry

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