Abstract
A large disadvantage to conventional diesel engines is the particulate matter emissions that are produced. The trade-off between NOx and soot emissions has been the major challenge for diesel diffusion combustion. Exhaust gas recirculation is an established technique used to suppress NOx emissions by diluting the combustion mixture, thus reducing the flame temperatures. In an effort to minimize soot emissions, studies on alternative fuels detail appealing emission advantages. Neat dimethyl ether (DME), an oxygen-borne fuel, presents itself as a high reactivity fuel with no carbon-to-carbon bonding. Furthermore, DME has good mixing ability, primarily owing to its low viscosity and surface tension. The spray characteristics of DME fuel injection are important for DI engine application. The injections are recorded with a high-speed camera to capture the spray behaviour, by means of measuring the spray cone angle and penetration length. In this work, high-pressure fuel injection sprays of DME fuel are analyzed and compared with those of diesel and n-butanol fuel. The results reveal that DME offers a wider spray cone angle and slower penetration rate than diesel and n-butanol fuel under 1 bar absolute background pressure. Under 110 °C background temperature, the DME fuel spray exhibits an enhanced flash boiling effect. These effects are strongly affected by background pressure.
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Acknowledgements
The research is supported by NSERC CRD, Discovery, CRC, CREATE programs; the CFI-ORF New Initiative Program, ORF-Research Excellence programs; the NCE AUTO21 and BioFuelNet programs; the Ford Motor Company, and the University of Windsor.
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LeBlanc, S., Yu, X., Zheng, M. (2020). High Pressure DME Spray for Compression Ignition Engines. In: Vasel-Be-Hagh, A., Ting, DK. (eds) Complementary Resources for Tomorrow. EAS 2019. Springer Proceedings in Energy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38804-1_3
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