Performance and Emission Characteristic of A Diesel Engine Using Diesel and Ethanol Blends

Abstract

The present research is aimed to investigate experimentally the performance and exhaust emission characteristics of the diesel engine when operated with conventional diesel fuel with three blends of diesel-biodiesel-ethanol (DBE) fuel having 5%, 10% and 15% of ethanol and 85%, 80% and 75% of diesel respectively, with fixed 10% of biodiesel. Engine performance and exhaust emission results have shown the brake specific fuel consumption for the three fuel blends are higher than that of diesel fuel and increases with the increase of the ethanol concentration in the blend. The brake power and torque for the fuel blend of 5% ethanol concentration is close to that of diesel fuel and decreases with higher concentration. The CO emission decreased significantly with the higher percentage of ethanol in diesel-biodiesel-ethanol blended fuel. Sulfur dioxide for the three blends increased slightly at lower speeds but at medium and higher speeds it is less than for the diesel fuel.