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Due to the increasing consumption of fossil fuels, alternative fuels in internal combustion engines have attracted a lot of attention in recent years. Ethanol is the most common alternative fuel used in spark ignition (SI) engines due to its advantages of biodegradability, positively impacting emissions reduction as well as octane number improvement. Meanwhile, acetone is well-known as one of the industrial waste solvents for synthetic fibers and most plastic materials. In comparison to ethanol, acetone has a number of more desirable properties for being a viable alternative fuel such as its higher energy density, heating value and volatility.

Butanol, which is a renewable biofuel, has been regarded as a promising alternative fuel for internal combustion engines. When blended with diesel and applied to pilot ignited natural gas engines, butanol has the capability to achieve lower emissions without sacrifice on thermal efficiency. However, high blend ratio of butanol is limited by its longer ignition delay caused by the higher latent heat and higher octane number, which restricts the improvement of emission characteristics. In this paper, the potential of increasing butanol blend ratio by adding hot exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) is investigated. 3D CFD model based on a detailed kinetic mechanism was built and validated by experimental results of natural gas engine ignited by diesel/butanol blends. The effects of hot EGR is then revealed by the simulation results of the combustion process, heat release traces and also the emissions under different diesel/butanol blend ratios.

Acetone-Butanol-Ethanol (ABE) is an intermediate product in the ABE fermentation process for producing bio-butanol. As an additive for diesel, it has been shown to improve spray evaporation, improve fuel atomization, enhance air-fuel mixing, and enhance combustion as a whole. The typical compositions of ABE are in a volumetric ratio of 3:6:1 or 6:3:1. From previous studies done in a constant volume chamber, it was observed that the presence of additional acetone in the blend caused advancement in the combustion phasing, but too much acetone content led to an increase in soot emission during combustion. The objective of this research was to investigate the combustion of these mixtures in a diesel engine. The experiments were conducted in an AVL 5402 single-cylinder diesel engine at different speeds and different loads to study component effects on the various engine conditions. The fuels tested in these experiments were D100, ABE(3:6:1)10, ABE(3:6:1)20, ABE(6:3:1)10, and ABE(6:3:1)20.

In order to comply with the stringent emission regulations, many researchers have been focusing on diesel-compressed natural gas (CNG) dual fuel operation in compression ignition (CI) engines. The diesel-CNG dual fuel operation mode has the potential to reduce both the soot and NOx emissions; however, the thermal efficiency is generally lower than that of the pure diesel operation, especially under the low and medium load conditions. The current experimental work investigates the potential of using diesel-1-butanol blends as the pilot fuel to improve the engine performance and emissions. Fuel blends of B0 (pure diesel), B10 (90% diesel and 10% 1-butanol by volume) and B20 (80% diesel and 20% 1-butanol) with 70% CNG substitution were compared based on an equivalent input energy at an engine speed of 1200 RPM. The results indicated that the diesel-1-butanol pilot fuel can lead to a more homogeneous mixture due to the longer ignition delay.

A novel combustion system called Jet Controlled Compression Ignition (JCCI) is investigated to directly control the combustion phasing of premixed diesel compression ignition. Experiments were conducted on a single-cylinder naturally aspirated diesel engine at 3000r/min without EGR. The experimental results showed a good linear relationship between spark timing in the ignition chamber and CA10 and CA50, which indicated the ability for direct combustion phasing control in premixed diesel combustion. The NOx and soot emissions gradually changed with the spark advance angle. Then, load sweep experiments were performed with fixed spark timing. The results showed the onset of combustion was almost unchanged over a wide load range. Additionally, NOx emission was greatly reduced at all test loads compared with the original engine. Soot emission was reduced at a comparatively high load while similar with that of the original engine at low loads.

To directly control the premixed combustion phasing, a novel method called Jet Controlled Compression Ignition (JCCI) is investigated. Experiments were conducted on a single cylinder natural aspirated diesel engine at 3000 r/min without EGR. Numerical model was validated by pressure and heat release rate curves at a fixed spark timing. The simulation results showed that the reacting active radical species with high temperature issued from ignition chamber played an important role on the onset of combustion in JCCI system. The combustion of diesel pre-mixtures was initiated rapidly by the combustion products issued from ignition chamber. Consequently, the experiments of spark timing sweep were conducted to verify the above deduction. The results showed a good linear relationship between spark timing and CA10 and CA50, which validated the ability for direct combustion phasing control in diesel premixed combustion.