Alcohol combustion chemistry

This article brings a comprehensive literature review with the objective of presenting butanol, its characteristics and properties. The focus of this work is to gain a better understanding of this alcohol and evaluate its potential use as biofuel, mainly for the automotive industry. An overview on the butanol production is shown, with emphasis on processes and raw materials for the production of biobutanol. The new and growing studies to improve the acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) process are also reviewed showing new developments focused in new strains and usage of different feedstock for fermentation, in search of better process yield. On the application of butanol as fuel, some highlights on other author's studies focused in the chemical kinetics of butanol are introduced and are useful to start a debate about the potential of this alcohol – or its blend with gasoline or diesel – as a new and environmentally interesting biofuel.

Review on the characteristics of butanol, its production and use as fuel in internal combustion engines

Energy security and global warming concern are the two main driving forces for the global alcohol development that also have the effort to animate the agro-industry. Generally, alcohol and ether fuels are produced from several sources and can be produced locally. Almost all alcohol fuels have similar combustion and ignition characteristics to existing known mineral fuels. Mainly the ether fuels (MTBE and DME) are used as additives at low blending ratio to enhance the octane number and oxygen content of gasoline. The addition of alcohol and ether fuels to gasoline lead to a complete combustion due to the higher oxygen content, thereby leads to increased combustion efficiency and decreased engine emissions. The objectives of this paper are to systematically review the use of alcohols and ethers including butanol, methanol, ethanol, and fusel oil, MTBE, and DME as fuels in SI engine. Also, the current study has investigated the effects of performance (brake torque, brake power, BSFC, effective efficiency, and EGT), emissions (CO, CO2, NOx and HC) and combustion characteristics of SI engine with alcohol and ether. The increase in engine performance could be attained with an increased compression ratio along with the use of alcohol fuels which have a higher-octane value. Furthermore, alcohol and ether burn very cleanly than regular gasoline and produce lesser carbon monoxide (CO) and nitrogen oxide (NOx). On the other hand, the energy value of alcohol and ether fuels is approximately 30% lower than gasoline; thereby the specific fuel consumption (SFC) will increase simultaneously when using alcohol and ether as a fuel. Finally, this paper also discusses the impacts of alcohol on engine vibration, engine noise, and potential to be used as a gasoline octane enhancer. Alcohol can be used as a pure fuel in spark ignition engine, but it requires some modifications to the engine.

Alcohol and ether as alternative fuels in spark ignition engine: A review

Study on performance and emissions of a passenger-car diesel engine fueled with butanol–diesel blends

Alcohol fuels have some significant advantages over other alternative fuels, including the ability to work in existing engines as well as the capability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This paper analyses the performance and emissions of compression and spark ignition engine using of alcohol fuels from the first aliphatic alcohol family; methanol, ethanol, propanol and butanol. The literature relevant to methanol, ethanol, propanol and butanol was reviewed and summarized to demonstrate its viability as an alternative fuel. The fuel properties of methanol, ethanol, propanol and butanol present the most important properties that allow such fuels as suitable candidates as an alternative fuel for compression and spark ignition engines. The performance and engine emissions indicators such as brake torque, brake power, BTE, BSFC NOx, PM, CO, CO2, HC and soot have been evaluated regarding tone at diesel and gasoline fuels. The results showed that alcohol fuels give different results to engine performance and emissions. Surprisingly, some research yield favorable results to the alcohol as compared to neat diesel and gasoline fuels. It can be concluded that methanol, ethanol, propanol and butanol are capable of reducing harmful engine exhaust emissions, however,at the expense of lower engine performance characteristics.

Alcohol based automotive fuels from first four alcohol family in compression and spark ignition engine: A review on engine performance and exhaust emissions

Jian Cai

Papers

Emission characteristics of a spark-ignition engine fuelled with gasoline-n-butanol blends in combination with EGR

A Comparative Study of Emission Characteristics of Propanol Isomers/Gasoline Blends Combined with EGR

A Comparative Study of Emission Characteristics of Propanol Isomers/Gasoline Blends Combined with EGR