Investigation of Cyclohexanol as an Oxygenated Additive for Gasoline–Bioethanol Mixtures and Its Effect on the Combustion and Emission Characteristics of Spark Ignition Engines

Abstract

The quantity of internal combustion engine-powered motorized vehicles in Indonesia has been increasing year after year. As a result, fossil fuel demand has also increased beyond Indonesia’s local production capacity, which decreases every year. The rapid growth of motorized vehicles also worsens air quality in Indonesia because of the combustion process in internal combustion engines, which produces toxic gases. One solution to this problem is to accelerate the usage of biofuels, in this context, bioethanol, as a fuel alternative. This study aims to determine the effect of oxygenated cyclohexanol additives to bioethanol–gasoline blends on 124.8 cc spark ignition (SI) engine performance and exhaust gas emission. The experiment was carried out using an engine dynamometer to measure engine performance, a pressure transducer to measure cylinder pressure, and a gas analyzer to measure exhaust gas emission. The experiment established that an 80% gasoline, 20% bioethanol fuel mixture (E20 mixture) with the addition of 18 ml of oxygenated cyclohexanol produced the best results among all the other mixtures tested; it lowered the specific fuel consumption (SFC) and coefficient of variation (COV) value, and produced fewer toxic gases, while minimizing power and torque losses.

Keywords

• bioethanol
• coefficient of variation
• gasoline
• oxygenated cyclohexanol
• spark ignition engine