Performance of new and aged injectors with and without fuel additives in a light duty diesel engine

Abstract

Two sets of diesel injectors are tested in combination with common fuel additives in a multi-cylinder light-duty diesel engine. One set consists of new injectors and the other is aged by over 100,000 km use in a vehicle. Four fuels are tested with these injector sets to investigate the impact of fuel additives on combustion and emission characteristics. The results show that the aged injectors consistently deliver larger quantities of fuel for a given injection strategy, leading to a higher power output and deviating emissions. This is hypothesized to be due to drift in the injector actuating characteristics. The fuels tested are a baseline diesel quality, and blends of this fuel with three additives: a cetane number improver (2-ethylhexyl nitrate), a soot reducer (tripropylene-glycol monomethyl ether), and a flow improver consisting of quaternary ammonium salts. At the selected low and medium load operating conditions, these additives had a smaller effect on the emissions than the injector ageing, the most notable effect being that TPGME reduces the soot emissions even at the oxygen-rich conditions studied here. These studies will be followed by optical investigations of the in-cylinder effects on spray and combustion characteristics.

Keywords

• Injector aging
• Fuel additives
• TPGME
• 2-EHN
• Quaternary ammonium salts