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Investigating the potential of a higher reactivity fuel to achieve faster heat-up of aftertreatment systems

Journal Article · · Fuel
 [1];  [2]
  1. University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI (United States); University of Wisconsin-Madison
  2. University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations
Shortening the aftertreatment system heat-up period will be crucial to meet upcoming emissions regulations, which mandate significant reductions in tail-pipe emissions for on-road heavy-duty vehicles. This work studies the impact of increasing fuel reactivity on the combustion of post injections during the expansion stroke. The work demonstrates an operating strategy using a blend of di-butyl ether (a potential low-carbon biofuel component) and #2 diesel that achieves higher exhaust enthalpy, while maintaining similar engine-out emissions (NOx and combustion efficiency) in comparison to the baseline #2 diesel fuel (cetane number 41). On average, a 12% increase in exhaust enthalpy was observed for the blend (cetane number 60) relative to the baseline fuel. The ability to operate the higher reactivity fuel at a more retarded post-injection timing, where combustion with #2 diesel was found to be more unstable, and less complete was key to achieving higher exhaust enthalpy. However, a small fuel penalty (3%–5%) was also associated with the higher reactivity fuel with this operating strategy. The formation of fuel lean regions, due to the long ignition delays at late injection conditions, was predicted to be the leading contributor to the increased emissions of products of partial combustion. Here, chemical kinetic simulations using surrogates for the fuels used in the experiments, demonstrated the ability of a higher cetane fuel to outperform the baseline fuel under fuel lean conditions with equivalence ratios less than 0.7.
Research Organization:
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE); USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Office of Sustainable Transportation. Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO)
Grant/Contract Number:
EE0008480
OSTI ID:
2376553
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 2377028
Journal Information:
Fuel, Journal Name: Fuel Vol. 373; ISSN 0016-2361
Publisher:
ElsevierCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (16)

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Related Subjects

09 BIOMASS FUELS
Aftertreatment
Biofuels
Cetane number
Di-butyl ether
Post-injection