Improving the viscosity and density of n-butanol as alternative to gasoline by blending with dimethyl carbonate

n-Butanol is a promising alternative to gasoline, but has the defect of high viscosity, while dimethyl carbonate (DMC), which is a good additive for gasoline to improve the combustion efficiency, has low viscosity. In this work, DMC is used as additive to reduce the viscosity of n-butanol. The viscosities of DMC + n-butanol binary mixtures were measured from 313.15 K to 343.15 K and at pressures up to 15 MPa over the mole fractions from 0.1 to 0.9. The densities of the mixtures were also measured to check the effect of DMC on the density of nbutanol. Experimental results show that DMC can greatly reduce viscosity, and meanwhile increase the density, which is expected to improve the performance of n-butanol as the alternative to gasoline. The dependence of the improvement of the density and viscosity of n-butanol caused by adding DMC on temperature and pressure are investigated to guide the optimization of combustion process. Two models were proposed for the calculation of the viscosities and densities of the binary mixtures of DMC and n-butanol with the average absolute relative deviations of 0.09% and 2.58%, respectively.

Automated summary

In this study, DMC was used as an additive to reduce the viscosity of n-butanol, resulting in a significant decrease in viscosity and an increase in density, which is expected to improve the performance of n-butanol as an alternative to gasoline. The dependencies of density and viscosity improvements on temperature and pressure were investigated to guide the optimization of combustion processes. Two models were proposed for calculating the viscosities and densities of the binary mixtures of DMC and n-butanol with good accuracy.