Combustion assessment of an ethanol/gasoline flex-fuel engine

This work surveyed the combustion behavior of commercial gasoline and hydrous ethanol on a flex-fuel Ford Rocam, four-stroke, four-cylinder, and 1000 cc, spark ignition engine. The crankshaft revolutions were varied and the emissions of oxygen, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and unburned hydrocarbons were acquired. Also the mass fuel flow rate, the cooling fluid temperature, and lambda were measured in order to perform the assessment. Oxygen emissions were used to confirm lambda parameter measurement. Emission index values for carbon monoxide and unburned hydrocarbons were defined in order to compute the combustion efficiency. Nitrous oxides were related to the cooling fluid temperature. As expected, fuel consumption is greater for ethanol than for gasoline. Combustion efficiency which was higher for ethanol and nitrous oxide emissions presented lower values when the engine was operated with gasoline.