Implementation and preliminary study of low temperature combustion with assorted biofuels in a Ford diesel engine
Abstract
Biofuels have drawn increased attention from the public and the engine researchers during the past decades. The biofuel uses may benefit in reducing engine emissions and greenhouse gas production. In this work, a new engine platform with a modern Ford diesel engine was prepared to perform experiments on low temperature combustion (LTC) with diesel and biofuels. A detailed documentation of the engine platform implementation was recorded. Engine experiments were performed to verify the platform preparation and to collect information for diesel baseline tests and ethanol port fuel injection (PFI) experiments. The ethanol PFI results were promising in suppressing the emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and smoke. It was observed that both NOx and smoke emissions from PFI ethanol ignited by diesel direct injection (DI) were lower than those from diesel combustions. The combustion phasing of diesel-ethanol combustion was under the control of diesel injection timing and exhaust gas recirculation (EGR).