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Environmental Science and Pollution Research

, Volume 26, Issue 2, pp 1661–1674 | Cite as

Effect of n-butanol/diesel blends and piston bowl geometry on combustion and emission characteristics of CI engine

  • Siva Prasad KattelaEmail author
  • Rajesh Khana Raju Vysyaraju
  • Srinivasa Rao Surapaneni
  • Prabhakara Rao Ganji
Research Article
First Online:
  • 75 Downloads

Abstract

The present study describes the experimental and numerical analysis of the combustion and emission characteristics of CI engine operated with diesel-butanol blends. Experiments were carried with neat diesel fuel (i.e., Bu00) and its blends of n-butanol, 10%, 20% and 30% by volume (Bu10, Bu20 and Bu30) at a constant speed and rated load. From the experimental results, it is observed that CO, NOx and smoke emissions decreased, whereas the unburned hydrocarbon (UBHC) emission increased with increasing butanol content, as compared to Bu00. From the experimental analysis, it is also observed that Bu20 blend gives higher brake thermal efficiency (BTE) and lower brake specific energy consumption (BSEC) as compared to Bu00, Bu10 and Bu30, but produces higher UBHC. In order to decrease the UBHC emission, different piston bowl geometries were analysed using simulation studies. The combustion and emission characteristics of the CI engine operating with Bu20 blend for three different piston bowl geometries viz., hemispherical combustion chamber (HCC), shallow combustion chamber (SCC) and toroidal combustion chamber (TCC), were studied using CONVERGE CFD code. The simulation model was validated with experimental results of the baseline engine configuration (HCC) for diesel fuel as well as Bu20 blend. The results showed that there is a significant reduction in UBHC and improvement of performance for SCC and TCC piston geometry compared to HCC piston geometry. However, a slight increment of NOx emissions was observed.

Keywords

Diesel-butanol blends CI engine HC emissions Piston geometry Performance and emissions 

Nomenclature

Buxy

Diesel-butanol blend, with (xy) percentage by volume of butanol

HCC

Hemi spherical Combustion Chamber

BSEC

Brake specific energy consumption (J/kWh)

bTDC

Before top dead centre

LHV

latent heat of vaporisation (kJ/kg)

BTE

Brake thermal efficiency (%)

NOx

Nitrogen oxides (g/kWh)

CI

Compression ignition

OCC

Omega combustion chamber

CO

Carbon monoxide (g/kWh)

SI

Spark ignition

CFD

Computational fluid dynamics

SCC

Shallow combustion chamber

DI

Direct injection

TCC

Toroidal combustion chamber

EGR

Exhaust gas recirculation

UBHC

Unburned hydrocarbon (g/kWh)

HRR

Heat release rate (J/CAD)

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Notes

Funding information

This work was supported by Centre for sustainable energy studies, NITW of Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme (TEQIP-II), India.

Compliance with ethical standards

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of Mechanical EngineeringNational Institute of Technology WarangalWarangalIndia
  2. 2.Department of Mechanical EngineeringNational Institute of Technology Andhra PradeshTadepalligudamIndia

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