Investigations on surrogate fuels for high-octane oxygenated gasolines

• Published in: Fuel (Guildford) Vol. 90; no. 2; pp. 640 - 646
• Main Authors: Machado, Guilherme B., Barros, José E.M., Braga, Sérgio L., Braga, Carlos Valois M., de Oliveira, Edimilson J., da Silva, Antonio H.M. da F.T., Carvalho, Leonardo de O.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kidlington Elsevier Ltd 01.02.2011; Elsevier
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Charge; Constituents; Devices; Energy; Energy. Thermal use of fuels; Engine test; Engines; Engines and turbines; Equipments for energy generation and conversion: thermal, electrical, mechanical energy, etc; Ethanol; Ethyl alcohol; Exact sciences and technology; Fuels; Gasoline; Oxygenated; Surrogate fuel; CFD; HCCI; Ethanol; PRF; Engine test; ICE; CFR; SFC; Surrogate fuel; PROÁLCOOL; ANOVA; ECU; SI; Gasoline; FC; WOT; MBT; AKI; Octane; Costs; Homogeneous charge compression ignition; Hydrocarbon; Computer simulation; Toluene; Gasoline engine; Combustion; Spark ignition engine; Experimental study; Isooctane; Heptane; Modeling; Optimization; Kinetic model; Internal combustion engine; Kinetics; Performance
• ISSN: 0016-2361; 1873-7153
• DOI: 10.1016/j.fuel.2010.10.024

Gasoline is a complex mixture that possesses a quasi-continuous spectrum of hydrocarbon constituents. Surrogate fuels that decrease the chemical and/or physical complexity of gasoline are used to enhance the understanding of fundamental processes involved in internal combustion engines (ICEs). Computational tools are largely used in ICE development and in performance optimization; however, it is not possible to model full gasoline in kinetic studies because the interactions among the chemical constituents are not fully understood and the kinetics of all gasoline components are not known. Modeling full gasoline with computer simulations is also cost prohibitive. Thus, surrogate mixtures are studied to produce improved models that represent fuel combustion in practical devices such as homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) and spark ignition (SI) engines. Simplified mixtures that represent gasoline performance in commercial engines can be used in investigations on the behavior of fuel components, as well as in fuel development studies. In this study, experimental design was used to investigate surrogate fuels. To this end, SI engine dynamometer tests were conducted, and the performance of a high-octane, oxygenated gasoline was reproduced. This study revealed that mixtures of iso-octane, toluene, n-heptane and ethanol could be used as surrogate fuels for oxygenated gasolines. These mixtures can be used to investigate the effect of individual components on fuel properties and commercial engines performance.