Water content determination of steam generated water-in-diesel emulsion

Emulsion fuel is one of the prevalent NOx and PM reducing techniques in compression ignition engines. An alternative method to produce emulsion is by mixing steam into diesel involving the condensation of water in the immiscible diesel. The converted steam into water, however, is difficult to determine. Hence, this paper describes a method of estimating the water content of the produced emulsion by using heat balance and Jakob’s number equations. Experiments were performed by using a custom designed 250 ml glass column, where final temperatures of the emulsion were recorded, and distillation of the sample was performed to analyze the water content. The results were compared with the equations where Jakob’s number model delivers a closer estimate of the experimental values (maximum difference 5.90%) than the heat balance equation (maximum difference 7.93%)

Diesel engine emission analysis using fuel from diverse emulsification methods

The focus of this work is to investigate the emission characteristics of a stationary diesel engine while utilizing an emulsion fuel from a novel preparation process. The emulsion preparation was performed in real time without using any surfactant. Instead of mechanically breaking the water down into droplets, the water is delivered thermally, by changing its phase from gas to liquid. Steam is used in this proposed process, where it will be converted into suspended water droplets once it meets colder diesel. The product is called steam-generated water-in-diesel emulsion fuel (S/D). The method is expected to reduce the moving components of a previous surfactant-less system; therefore, reducing costs and increasing the system reliability. The emission characteristics of S/D were compared with EURO 2 diesel (D2), and a conventional emulsion denoted as E10. E10 was prepared using 10% water (volumetric) and SPAN80 as a surfactant. The emission characterizations were carried out based on the exhaust gas of a single cylinder naturally aspirated CI engine fueled with D2, S/D, and E10. Compared to D2, both emulsions significantly reduced the emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) (E10 max ↓58.0%, S/D max ↓40.0%) and particulate matter (PM) (E10 max ↓20.0%, S/D max ↓57.0%)