Performance, Combustion, and Emission Evaluation of Ethanol-Gasoline Blends Ignited by Diesel in Dual-Fuel Intelligent Charge Compression Ignition (ICCI) Engine

A recent proposed dual-fuel combustion mode, intelligent charge compression ignition (ICCI), realizes the high-efficiency and clean combustion by organizing continuous stratification in a wide range of engine load. The paper investigated the performance of alcohol blended gasoline as low-reactivity fuel (LRF) in ICCI combustion mode. Pure ethanol named E100 was also tested as LRF for comparison. To emphasize the differences of LRF properties and exclude the effect of the heat release phasing, the diesel injection timing was adjusted to maintain the same combustion phasing (CA50) at various LRF ratios under medium load. The results showed that E100 and E85 (ethanol ratio in gasoline-ethanol blend) promoted the degree of homogeneous combustion and eradicated soot emissions despite a slight increase of NOx. The maximum indicated thermal efficiency (ITE) was over 51.1% using E85, followed by 50.5% of E50. The perfect substitution ratio at the maximum ITE decreased from more than 80% to about 65% when increasing the ethanol ratio in LRF from 10% to 100%. The unregulated emissions such as aldehydes, ethylene, and methane, produced from incomplete combustion of ethanol were inhabited by E85, while the formation of toluene attributed to the appropriate carbon chain length of gasoline diminished when using E85 and E100.

Automated summary

The intelligent charge compression ignition (ICCI) dual-fuel combustion mode achieves high efficiency and clean combustion by organizing continuous stratification within a wide range of engine load. This study investigated the performance of alcohol blended gasoline as a low-reactivity fuel (LRF) in ICCI combustion mode. The results showed that ethanol and ethanol-gasoline blended fuel promoted homogeneous combustion and reduced soot emissions, although there was a slight increase in NOx emissions. The maximum indicated thermal efficiency decreased as the ethanol ratio in the LRF increased, but it helped suppress the formation of unregulated emissions.