Technical Paper
Start-up and Steady-State Performance of a New Renewable Alcohol-To-Jet (ATJ) Fuel in Multiple Diesel Engines
2015-04-14
2015-01-0901
A new Alcohol To Jet (ATJ) fuel has been developed using a process which takes biomass feedstock to produce a branched butanol molecule. Further dehydration, reforming and hydro-treating produced principally a highly branched C12 iso-paraffin molecule. This ATJ fuel with a low cetane value (DCN = 18) was blended with Navy jet fuel (JP5) in various quantities and tested in order to determine how much ATJ could be blended before diesel engine operation became problematic (the US Navy and Marine Corps may use jet fuel in their diesel engines). Blends of 20%, 30% and 40% ATJ (by volume) were tested with jet fuel. The Derived Cetane Number (DCN) falls from 45 for the base JP5 to 38 with the 40% ATJ component blended in. Engine start performance was evaluated on two Yanmar engines and a Waukesha CFR diesel engine and showed that engine start times increased steadily with increasing ATJ content.
