Tuesday, 8 May 2012


Effect of Isopropyl alcohol on direct injection diesel engine

A small intro:
Alcohol is a bio-based renewable and oxygenated fuel, thereby providing potential to increase performance, reduce the PM emission in diesel engines and to provide reduction in life cycle CO2.The objective of this investigation is to first create a stable alcohol-diesel blended fuel, and then to generate transient performance, and emissions data for evaluation of different alcohol content on a diesel engine. Isopropyl alcohol a new oxygenate is investigated in this study. A single-cylinder, air-cooled, direct injection diesel engine developing a power output of 5.2 kW at 1500 rev/min was used.  Base data was generated with standard diesel fuel. Subsequently four fuel blends, namely 90D: 10IPAa, 85D: 15IPA, 75D: 25IPA and 70D: 30IPA percentage by volume were prepared and tested. Engine performance and emission data were used to optimize the blends for reducing emission and improving performance. Results show improved performance with blends compared to neat fuel for all conditions of the engine. However, 75D: 25IPA blends recorded a maximum brake thermal efficiency of 36.86%. Drastic reduction in NOx was observed with slight increase in HC emissions for the blends as compared to neat diesel.

What guys just confused ok , I explain it in a simple way :)
  • Its just mixing of Isopropyl alcohol (which is nothing but rubbing alcohol like CD cleaner liquid) with ordinary diesel fuel of different proportions like 10%,20%,25%,30%..
  • Then its performance and emission are  tested  in ordinary diesel engines...

Hereby I gave my work completely guys :

EXPERIMENTAL SETUP

 Diesel with Isopropyl alcohol blends are used in single cylinder diesel engine. The diesel engine is operated on different blend ratios 90D: 10IPA, 85D: 15IPA, 75D: 25IPA and 70D: 30IPA respectively.
Experiments were conducted on a, single-cylinder, water-cooled, direct injection diesel engine developing a power output of 5.2 kW at 1500 rev/min connected with a water cooled eddy current dynamometer. The engine was operated at a constant speed of 1500 rpm and standard injection pressure of 220 Kgf/cm2. The specification of the engine is given in Table1. The fuel flow rate was measured on volume basis using a burette and a stop watch. K-type thermocouple and a digital display were employed to note the exhaust gas temperature.
NOx emission is measured with help of an exhaust gas analyzer. AVL smoke meter is used to measure the smoke density. AVL five-gas analyzer is used to measure the rest of the pollutants. A burette is used to measure the fuel consumption for a specified time interval. During this interval of time, how much fuel the engine consumes is measured, with the help of the stopwatch. 

Type
Vertical, Water Cooled, Four Stroke




Number of Cylinder
One

Bore
87.5 mm

Stroke
110 mm

Compression Ratio
17.5:1

Maximum Power
5.2 kW

Speed
1500 Rev/min

Dynamometer
Eddy Current

Injection Timing
23o Before TDC



Injection Pressure
220 kgf/cm2 , Direct Injection





 Specifications of the Test Engine

EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE

The engine was allowed to run with neat diesel at a various load for nearly 10 minutes to attain the steady state constant speed conditions. Then the following observations were made.

1       The water flow is started and maintained constant throughout the experiment.
2       The load, speed and temperature indicators were switched on.
3       The engine was started by cranking after ensuring that there is no load.
4       The engine is allowed to run at the rated speed of 1500 rev/min for a period of 10 minutes to reach the steady state.
5       The fuel consumption is measured by a stop watch.
6       Smoke readings were measured using the Smoke meter at the exhaust outlet.
7       The NOx emission was measured using exhaust gas analyzer.
8       The exhaust temperature was measured at the indicated by using a sensor.
9       Then the load is applied by adjusting the knob, which is connected to the eddy current dynamometer.
10  Experiments were conducted using neat diesel – ethanol, diesel, and Isopropyl alcohol the above procedure is adopted.



 Experimental setup

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The figure 1 shows the Specific fuel consumption for different concentration of Isopropyl alcohol.  The specific fuel consumption increases with increase in brake power of the engine.  Among the blends 70D:30 IPA concentration of Isopropyl alcohol shows lower specific fuel consumption than other concentrations.
          
Figure 1.Variation of SFC for Diesel: IPA blends at peak load.

Figure 2 shows the brake thermal efficiency for different ratio of fuel Isopropyl alcohol. The brake thermal efficiency increases with increase in brake power of the engine.  Among the blend ratio 75D: 25 IPA concentration of Isopropyl alcohol shows higher than that of other blend ratio.

Figure 2.Variation of BTE for Diesel: IPA blends at peak load
The presence of oxygen due to the addition of Isopropyl alcohol in the diesel fuel, improve the combustion, especially diffusion combustion and hence increase the brake thermal efficiency.

                         Fig. 3 shows the exhaust smoke (soot) density for the neat diesel fuel and the various percentages of the IPA in its blends with diesel fuel. One can observe that the soot emitted by the 70D:30IPA fuel blends is significantly lower than that for the corresponding neat diesel fuel case, with the reduction being higher the higher the percentage of in the blend. The results reveal that the tendency to generate soot from the fuel-rich regions inside diesel diffusion flame is decreased by Isopropyl alcohol in the blends.
                  


      
Figure 4.Variation of EGT for Diesel: IPA blends at peak load
Figure 4 gives the exhaust gas temperature with different concentration of blend ratio.  The result is shown that exhaust gas increases linear with increase of brake power of the engine.  It can be concluded that all the blend ratio of Isopropyl alcohol lower the exhaust gases than sole fuel.
Figure5.Variation of NOx for Diesel: IPA blends at peak load


Figure 5 shows NOx emission of Isopropyl alcohol concentration.  It can be seen that NOx emission decreases with bled ratio than sole fuel shows max reduction of NOx emissions.  Among the blend ratio 70D:30IPA concentration of Isopropyl alcohol shows lower than that of other blend ratio at peak load. 

 Figure6.Variation of HC for Diesel: IPA blends at peak load

Figure 6 shows that hydrocarbon emission of blend ratio concentration.  It can be seen that hydrocarbon emission increases with all the concentration of blend ratio than sole fuel. 


Finally from this project i suggest 75% diesel and 25% is suitable for low emission as well as high performance..........................