Investigation on parameters of methanol fuel and its blend on a diesel dual fuel engine

Abstract

An experimental investigation has been performed on a 4 cylinder (turbocharged and intercooled) 62.5 kW gen-set dual fuel diesel engine. Break specific fuel consumption (bsfc), break thermal efficiency (bte) along with HC, CO, CO2 and NOx at various mixture ratios of methanol substitutions and loads have been investigated. The minimum and maximum BSFC were found to be 0.18 and 1.01 at 40 and 10% of full engine load and 40 and 60% of methanol substitution compared to pure diesel operation where the minimum and maximum BSFC were found to be 0.26 and 0.434 at 20 and 10% of full load condition. The minimum and maximum BTE were found to be 7.19 and 40.8 at 60 and 40% methanol substitution and at 10 and 40% load conditions whilst for pure diesel operation it was found to be 19.7 and 40.4 at 10 and 40% load conditions respectively. A two factor, three-level full factorial design was employed and the experimental results are in accordance with the results obtained.

Keywords

• methanol blend
• oxygen concentration
• break specific fuel consumption
• break thermal efficiency