Experimental study on combustion, performance, and emission characteristics of a homogeneous charge compression ignition engine fuelled with multiple biofuel-gasoline blends

For sustainable future mobility and power generation applications, there is a compelling need to develop flex-fuel engines that operate with multiple regional or season-specific biofuels. The present investigation focussed on mitigating agricultural diesel engines' pollutant emission and performance problems. A systematic experimental study is carried out in a modified agricultural diesel engine to compare and evaluate the engine characteristics of the biofuel-gasoline blends fuelled Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) mode. Seven different oxygenated biofuels: acetone, ethanol, methanol, isopropanol, isobutanol, ethyl acetate, and diisopropyl ether blended in gasoline, were investigated. 2-Ethylhexyl nitrate was used to improve the reactivity of fuel blends to the extent that lower engine loads could be reached. All the investigated biofuelgasoline blends could produce permissible emission levels by suitably tuning the fuel proportions. The total nitrogen oxides and smoke emissions were below 2.8 and 0.0007 g/kWh, respectively, for all the investigated biofuel-gasoline blends at all the HCCI engine load conditions. The highest indicated thermal efficiency of 42% was attained using 60% ethanol/34% gasoline/6% 2-EHN blend in the HCCI engine at 4.63 bar BMEP (86% rated load), a notable 25% improvement compared to the conventional diesel engine. A detailed investigation was done to elucidate the HCCI engine performance (indicated thermal efficiency) trend variations with biofuel type and engine load. The Response Surface Method was adopted to correlate the maximum and the minimum engine load with the fuel composition and properties. The Desirability Approach provided the optimum fuel composition and properties to maximize the engine load range. The optimum solution achieved the engine load range of 20%-89% rated load. Overall, a compact, efficient, and clean HCCI combustion-based engine technology was developed that could be operated using multiple biofuels over an expanded load range.