Fuel 156 (2015) 211218

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Fuel
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/fuel

Combustion and emission characteristics of diesel engine fueled with

diesel/biodiesel/pentanol fuel blends
Li Li, Wang Jianxin, Wang Zhi , Xiao Jianhua
State Key Laboratory of Automotive Safety and Energy, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

h i g h l i g h t s
 First study on combustion characteristic of diesel/biodiesel/pentanol with CI mode.
 Pentanol addition with diesel/biodiesel shows improved fuel/air mixing.
 Pentanol blends shows advanced CA50 and shorter combustion duration.
 Pentanol blends presents low emissions while maintaining higher ITE.

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 8 February 2015
Received in revised form 15 April 2015
Accepted 20 April 2015
Available online 28 April 2015
Keywords:
Pentanol
Biodiesel
Compression ignition
Emissions
Heat release rate

a b s t r a c t
Pentanol is one of the next generation biofuels that could potentially help relieve the energy crisis and
environmental problems. The objective of this study is to reveal the effects of pentanol addition to diesel
and biodiesel fuels in different ratios on the combustion and emission of a single-cylinder direct-injection
diesel engine. The tests were conducted at a constant speed (1600 r/min) under different engine loads
without exhaust gas recirculation. The indicated thermal efciency using pentanol blends was found
to be higher than that of using pure diesel for all of tested loads from 0.5 to 1.0 MPa indicated mean effective pressure at the test conditions, which is due to its higher maximum heat release rate and shorter
combustion duration. An obvious decrease in soot emissions was attained with the addition of pentanol.
Moreover, emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) were simultaneously reduced compared with using pure
diesel fuel at low to middle loads. Furthermore, diesel engine fueled with oxygenated fuel blends can
reduce the carbon monoxide and unburnt total hydrocarbons emissions except for the dieselpentanol
blends at low engine load. Finally, the strategy with 40% diesel30% biodiesel30% pentanol showed better combustion, emission characteristics as well as economy performance among all the fuels.
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Increasingly stringent emission regulations and concerns over
energy security have recently led to extensive increasing interest
in alternative renewable fuels. Except for advanced combustion
modes, the idea of using oxygenated fuels as alternatives to reduce
diesel emissions has been studied for many year. Recently, many
researchers focused their attention on fuel design for low emissions and better combustion control [1,2]. Among all oxygenated
biofuels, alcohols have been widely investigated in the past decades, especially methanol [36] and ethanol [711]. However, in
recent years, a strong interest in alcohols with longer carbon chain,
such as butanol, whose molecule containing four carbons, has
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: wangzhi@tsinghua.edu.cn (Z. Wang).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.fuel.2015.04.048
0016-2361/ 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

emerged because of their favorable physical and thermodynamic

properties [12]. For example, higher alcohols have the potential
to overcome the drawback of low energy density of small-molecule
alcohols and can achieve better miscibility with diesel fuel [13].
Meanwhile, higher alcohols offer benets in reducing soot and carbon monoxide (CO) emissions at constant specic nitrogen oxides
(NOx) emission in a diesel engine [14].
Recent studies found that the properties of oxygenated fuels,
such as volatility, oxygen content, latent evaporation heat and
cetane number (CN) do impact the combustion and emission characteristics signicantly. Wang et al. [15] proposed a fuel design
scheme including diesel, biodiesel and dimethyl carbonate (DMC)
to meet the Euro IV emission regulation without using any aftertreatment device. Yilmaz et al. [16] conducted experiments with
different types of blended fuels with diesel, biodiesel, alcohols
and vegetable oil in a two-cylinder diesel engine. They observed

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L. Li et al. / Fuel 156 (2015) 211218

decreased NOx emissions and increased CO, total hydrocarbon

(THC) emissions by adding alcohols. Sharon et al. [17] compared
the effects of different blended fuels of diesel, used palm oil and
butanol on a DI diesel engine. Results showed that a reduction of
smoke opacity, NOx emissions and an improvement on brake thermal efciency (BTE) were achieved with butanol addition. Hulwan
et al. [18] found an obvious reduction in smoke for dieselethanol
biodiesel blends, where biodiesel was used as a co-solvent for dieselethanol blends of high ethanol content. Engine tests using dieselbiodieselbutanol blends were carried out by Zhang et al. [19]
on a single cylinder engine and results showed that the addition of
butanol could effectively reduce both particulate mass and total
particle number concentrations. Tccar et al. [20] concluded that
engine emissions of NOx, CO and smoke opacity were improved
with butanol addition.
Similar to butanol, pentanol is one of the next-generation biofuels with a ve-carbon molecular structure, which can be produced
from renewable feedstock [21,22]. Pentanol has an even higher
energy density compared to butanol, which could further improve
the fuel economy. In addition, compared to small-molecule alcohols, pentanol has higher cetane number and is thus easier to
auto-ignite. These properties provide better compatibility with
conventional diesel engines and existing fuel distribution infrastructure. However, few studies on the use of pentanol as an alternative fuel or fuel additive have been reported in compression
ignition engines. Yang and Dec [23] studied the fundamental combustion characteristics of iso-pentanol in homogeneous charge
compression ignition (HCCI) engines, and found that iso-pentanol
has higher HCCI reactivity than gasoline and ethanol. Wei et al.
[24], Campos-Fernandez et al. [25] found that dieselpentanol
blends could signicantly reduce both the mass and number concentrations of particulate matter, and improve the brake thermal
efciency without adverse inuences on combustion with respect
to the diesel fuel. Besides, several fundamental experimental
[26,27] and modeling studies [28] for pentanol combustion also
drew many researchers attention recently.
The objective of this research is to evaluate the potential of adding pentanol to different dieselbiodiesel blended fuels in order to
improve the overall fuel performance and thus attain an overall
good engine performance. On one hand, the addition of pentanol
with lower viscosity and high volatility could improve the
atomization quality of dieselbiodiesel blends, and the higher oxygen content in pentanol could reduce soot emission. On the other
hand, biodiesels higher cetane number could maintain the ignition
quality for the blended fuels. Finally, a promising multi-component
blending strategy is determined to attain the higher percentage of
oxygen content but at the same time keeping important fuel properties such as density, viscosity, volatility and cetane number
within acceptable limits.

2. Experimental setup and test procedure

2.1. Test engine
In this work, a single cylinder, four-stroke diesel engine retrotted from a four-cylinder engine was employed. The main engine
specications are listed in Table 1.
The engine is connected to an electric dynamometer, which is
capable of producing 110 kW and rated at a maximum speed of
4000 rpm. The engine electronic control unit (ECU) is modied into
an open module, which allowed us to exibly control the injection
parameters, such as injection pressure, number of injection events,
and injection timing. The tests were carried out after the temperature of the lubricating oil and cooling water have reached 85 C to
ensure that the engine was at its steady condition.

Table 1
Engine specications.
Compression ratio
Bore (mm)
Stroke (mm)
Connecting rod length (mm)
Number of valves
Displacement (L)
Injector
Injection system
Intake valve open (CA BTDC)
Intake valve close (CA ABDC)
Exhaust valve open (CA BBDC)
Exhaust valve close (CA ATDC)

16.7
83.1
92
145.8
4
0.5
7 holes, 0.136 mm diameter
Common rail
24
50
86
16

2.2. Test fuel

Table 2 lists the main properties of diesel, biodiesel, pentanol
and test fuels used in the study. The commercial 0# diesel with
the cetane number of 56.5 is used as the baseline fuel. It is seen
that pentanol has a lower CN, surface tension, density and boiling
point compared to the diesel fuel. Biodiesel, on the other hand, has
the highest CN, surface tension, density and boiling point among
the three neat fuels. Meanwhile, due to higher viscosity, biodiesel
has poor atomization property compared with diesel [29].which
could be improved with the addition of pentanol. In this study,
three different blended fuels, D70P30 (70% diesel, 30% pentanol),
D70B30 (70% diesel, 30% biodiesel) and D40B30P30 (40% diesel,
30% biodiesel and 30% pentanol) were prepared at the mixing ratio
of volume. Because of the relatively low boiling point of pentanol,
addition of pentanol into the blended fuels could lead to rapid
vaporization and thus improve atomization efciency. Since mixing of the higher volatility with the lower one could promote the
evaporation of lower one [30], this presents a fuel design approach
to optimize the spray characteristic of the fuel blends. On the other
hand, the addition of biodiesel with higher ignitability can enhance
the ignition characteristic of the blends.
2.3. Test facilities and methods
The schematic of the experimental set-up is shown in Fig. 1. In
this test, the cylinder pressure was sampled with an AVL GH14P
transducer and recorded with the data acquisition system (AVL
Indimodul 621) at a resolution of 0.5CA. Heat release and other
combustion analysis parameters were calculated from the averaged cylinder pressure of 200 consecutive cycles. Turbocharger
was removed from the engine and an external air compressor
was used to supply intake air. The AVL 439 opacimeter was
employed to measure smoke, and the light absorption coefcient
k is used for the soot scale. The gaseous emissions, including
NOx, CO, CO2 and HC, were measured by the AVL CEB-II exhaust
gas analyzer. The fuel consumption was measured by an FCM-D
digital fuel meter with a resolution of 0.1 g.
Engine tests were carried out at six steady loads and the constant speed of 1600 rpm and no exhaust gas recirculation (EGR)
was used. Engine load was swept from Indicated Mean Effective
Pressure (IMEP) of 0.51.0 MPa. All test data was acquired with
constant intake pressure of 0.12 MPa. The same double injection
strategies were implemented for all fuels. For pilot injection, 10%
of total fuel amount was delivered at the 17crank angle (CA)
before top dead center (BTDC), and the main injection timing
was 1 CA BTDC. Meanwhile, the injection pressure was maintained at 80 MPa.
Considering the lower heating value (LHV) difference between
the oxygenate fuel blends and diesel, the fuel consumption for oxygenate fuel blends was scaled with the same LHV of diesel for a fair
comparison, according to the following equation:

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L. Li et al. / Fuel 156 (2015) 211218

Table 2
Properties of baseline fuels and tested fuels.
0# Diesel

Pentanola

Biodiesel

D70B30

D70P30

D40B30P30

Viscosity @ 20 C (mm /s)

Low heating value (MJ/Kg)
Oxygen content (% weight)
Latent heating @ 25 C (kJ/kg)
Cetane number
Density @ 20 C (kg/m3)
Surface tension @ 20 C (103Nm1)

4.127
42.68
0
270
56.5
830.4
27.5

2.89
35.06
18.15
308
2025
815
24.7

7.159
38.29
11.1
258
61.7
871.4
30.3

5.03
41.38
3.3

842.7
28.2

3.2
40.42
5.5

825.8
26.2

3.9
39.09
8.8

838.1
26.9

Boiling point (C)

T10 = 223
T50 = 266
T90 = 311

138

T10 = 323
T50 = 326
T90 = 335

T10 = 230
T50 = 280
T90 = 314

T10 = 135
T50 = 240
T90 = 298

T10 = 135
T50 = 264
T90 = 310

Data have been taken from Refs. [2328].

Fig. 1. Experimental setup.

m0new mmeasure  V diesel  qdiesel  LHV diesel

2.4. Error analysis

V biodiesel  qbiodiesel  LHV biodiesel

V pentanol  qpentanol  LHV pentanol =V diesel  qdiesel
V biodiesel  qbiodiesel V pentanol  qpentanol =LHV diesel

where m0new is the corrected fuel consumption for the oxygenate

blended fuel by converting the actual fuel consumption to a value
based on the same LHV with diesel, mmeasure is the actual measured
fuel consumption, V diesel , V biodiesel ; and V pentanol are the volume fractions of diesel, biodiesel and pentanol, qdiesel ; qbiodiesel and qpentanol
are the densities of diesel, biodiesel and pentanol, and
LHV diesel ; LHV biodiesel and LHV pentanol are the LHV of diesel, biodiesel
and pentanol fuel, respectively. Therefore, all the indicated specic
fuel consumption (ISFC) of fuel blends were the corrected values in
this paper.

An error analysis for the engine measurements and calculations,

such as pressure, IMEP, ISFC etc. was carried out based on root
mean square method [31,32]. The uncertainty in calculated variables was determined using formula (2).

Table 3
Uncertainty of measured and calculated parameters.
Parameters

Uncertainty (%)

Pressure
Engine speed
ISFC
IMEP

0.5
0.5
1.0
0.6

2

@R
Ux
@x2 2

2




@R
Ux
@xn n

2 #1=2
2

where UR is the uncertainty of the measured quantity R, xn are independent variables with measured uncertainties, and U x1 , U x2 ; U xn are
error limits of measured parameters. The details of the uncertainties was shown in Table 3.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Combustion characteristics
Fig. 2 plots the in-cylinder pressure and heat release rate (HRR)
proles of four fuel blends under different engine loads. It is seen
that the combustion of diesel is a typical spray-diffusion combustion, which is controlled by the combined effects of physical and
chemical properties of the fuel. The physical properties of fuel
including the density, surface tension and volatility control the
quality of atomization, vaporization and mixing, while the chemical properties largely depend on the chemical reactivity of fuel. The
ignitability of a fuel is typically characterized by its cetane number,
thus the ignition characteristic of D40B30P30 was improved due to
the combination of the biodiesel (higher CN) and pentanol. It can
be seen in Fig. 2ad that the heat release prole at the main combustion phase presents two-stage combustion process for all fuels
at middle-high loads. As the engine load increases, the proportion
of second-stage combustion heat release increased and the combustion duration increases accordingly.
Fig. 3 shows the HRR and in-cylinder pressure of various fuels
under the engine load of 0.5 MPa and 1.0 MPa. Fig. 4 compares

120

80

2
40

0
-2

10

Injection timing [a.u.]

-30

-20

-10

10

20

30

8
6

120

80

40

0
-2

-30

-20

-10

(b) D70B30

2
40

0
-2
Injection timing [a.u.]

-4

-10

10

20

30

40

40

160
IMEP=0.5MPa
IMEP=0.6MPa
IMEP=0.7MPa
IMEP=0.8MPa
IMEP=0.9MPa
IMEP=1.0MPa

8
6

120

80

2
40

0
-2

0
Injection timing [a.u.]

-4
-20

30

10

160

80

-30

20

(a) Diesel

-40

10

Crank Angle [Deg ATDC]

120

Injection timing [a.u.]

-4
-40

40

160

IMEP=0.5MPa
IMEP=0.6MPa
IMEP=0.7MPa
IMEP=0.8MPa
IMEP=0.9MPa
IMEP=1.0MPa

Crank Angle [Deg ATDC]

IMEP=0.5MPa
IMEP=0.6MPa
IMEP=0.7MPa
IMEP=0.8MPa
IMEP=0.9MPa
IMEP=1.0MPa

10

Heat Release Rete [J/deg]

-4
-40

In-Cylinder Pressure [MPa]

160

IMEP=0.5MPa
IMEP=0.6MPa
IMEP=0.7MPa
IMEP=0.8MPa
IMEP=0.9MPa
IMEP=1.0MPa

Heat Release Rete [J/deg]

In-Cylinder Pressure [MPa]

10

the rst-stage and second-stage maximum heat release rate

(MHRR) at main combustion phase for all fuels under the engine
load of 1.0 MPa. It is obvious that D70P30 presents the highest
MHRR, while D70B30 shows the lowest one. Higher rst-stage
MHRR indicates better fuel-air mixing process, and higher pentanol fraction in the fuel blends results in higher MHRR of rststage. As discussed above, the vaporization of blends spray is promoted by mixing the higher volatility fuel of pentanol. Namely, the
D70P30 has higher volatility and lower density compared with diesel. Similarly, D40B30P30 has higher volatility and lower density
compared with D70B30. The results demonstrated that the addition of pentanol presents better atomization and quicker mixing
of fuel vapor with air than that of the diesel at the same test conditions, which leads to higher MHRR in the rst-stage combustion
process. Similar trends for the pentanol blends can also be
observed at other running conditions.
Combustion parameters including ignition delay, combustion
duration and CA50 (position of 50% heat released) at the main
combustion phase are illustrated in Figs. 5 and 6 . The ignition
delay was dened as the crank angle interval between the start
of main-injection and the start of main-combustion, and the start
of main-combustion was determined from the heat-release analysis as CA5 (position of 5% heat released) at the main combustion
phase. The combustion duration is dened as the crank angle interval between CA5 and CA90 (position of 90% heat released) at the
main combustion phase. With the increase of the in-cylinder temperature after the rst stage heat release, the chemical ignition
delay effect was weakened while the physical delay due to a higher
volatility and lower viscosity of the pentanol fuel played a major
role on the auto-ignition. As a result, the ignition delays of four
fuels do not show much difference in spite of the different CN at

Heat Release Rete [J/deg]

@R
Ux
@x1 1

In-Cylinder Pressure [MPa]

"

In-Cylinder Pressure [MPa]

UR

L. Li et al. / Fuel 156 (2015) 211218

-40

-30

-20

-10

10

20

Crank Angle [Deg ATDC]

Crank Angle [Deg ATDC]

(c) D70P30

(d) D40B30P30

30

40

Fig. 2. Comparisons of HRR, in-cylinder pressure of the four fuel blends as engine loads sweeping at 1600 rpm, NO EGR is used.

Heat Release Rete [J/deg]

214

215

L. Li et al. / Fuel 156 (2015) 211218

120

80

2
40

0
-2
-4
-40

Injection timing [a.u.]

-30

-20

-10

10

20

30

40

In-Cylinder Pressure [MPa]

160

10

Heat Release Rete [J/deg]

In-Cylinder Pressure [MPa]

Diesel
D70B30
D70P30
D40B30P30

Diesel
D70B30
D70P30
D40B30P30

8
6

120

80

2
40

0
-2
Injection timing [a.u.]

-4
-40

-30

Crank Angle [Deg ATDC]

-20

-10

10

20

30

Heat Release Rete [J/deg]

160

10

40

Crank Angle [Deg ATDC]

(a) IMEP=0.5MPa

(b) IMEP=1.0MPa

Fig. 3. Variation of HRR and in-cylinder pressure of the four fuel blends at 1.0 MPa IMEP.

80

16

First-stage MHRR
Second-stage MHRR

Diesel
D70B30
12

D70P30
D40B30P30

CA50 [CA]

MHRR [J/deg]

60

40

20

Diesel

D70B30

D40B30P30

D70P30

Fig. 4. Comparisons of rst-stage and second-stage MHRR in main combustion

phase at 1.0 MPa IMEP.

0
0.6

0.8

1.0

Indicated Mean Effective Pressure [MPa]

Fig. 6. Comparisons of CA50 for the four fuel blends at different loads.

60

Crank Angle [CA]

50

Ignition Delay

3.2. Emission performance

Combustion Duration

3.2.1. NOx emissions

The regular emissions including nitrogen oxides, soot, unburnt
total hydrocarbon, and carbon monoxide for different fuel blends
at varying loads were presented and discussed in this section. At
the test condition of supercharging, the equivalence ratio will
decreases at the same fuel injection quantity. Thus the reduction
of emissions such as CO, THC, and soot could be achieved for all
the test fuels compared with that under the naturally aspirated
conditions.
Fig. 7a shows the variation of NOx emission for different
blended fuels. In general, NOx emissions increases rstly and then
decreases with increasing engine load for all test fuels. It is
expected that higher in-cylinder gas temperature lead to higher
NOx emissions as load increased rstly, then absence of oxygen
and the shorter residence time are the main reason for the
decreased NOx formation at high load. Comparing with the diesel
fuel, an increase of 18% in NOx emission was observed for
D70B30 at different loads. This may be attributed to the reduced
soot radiative heat transfer and the subsequent increase in ame
temperature [33,34]. In addition, the higher oxygen availability
and the advance of injection for biodiesel could also promote
NOx formation reactions [35].
NOx emissions were found to be lower with pentanol addition
to the blends at low engine loads. At engine load of 0.6 MPa, the

40

30

20

10

Diesel

D70B30

D40B30P30

D70P30

Fig. 5. Comparisons of ID and combustion duration for the four fuel blends at
1.0 MPa IMEP.

the main combustion phase. It can also be seen from Fig. 5 that the
combustion duration is shortened as the pentanol addition to the
blends owing to the improved fuel-air mixing rate. In addition,
the pentanol blended fuels have the smaller CA50 than that of diesel and D70B30, as shown in Fig. 6. That indicates the center of heat
release curve was closing to the top-dead-center and pentanol
blended fuels have rapid combustion rate.

L. Li et al. / Fuel 156 (2015) 211218

12

8
6
4
2
0.4

0.03
0.02
0.01

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

1.0

1.1

0.00
0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

1.0

Indicated mean effective pressure [ MPa ]

Indicated mean effective pressure [ MPa ]

(a) Indicated specific NOx

(b) Light absorption coefficient

1.5

1.1

8
Diesel
D70B30
D70P30
D40B30P30

1.0

0.5

0.0
0.4

Diesel
D70B30
D70P30
D40B30P30

0.04

Soot [1/m]

10

0.05
Diesel
D70B30
D70P30
D40B30P30

Indicated Specific CO [g/kW.h]

Indicated Specific THC [g/kW.h]

Indicated Specific NOx [g/kW.h]

216

Diesel
D70B30
D70P30
D40B30P30

0
0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

1.0

1.1

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

1.0

Indicated mean effective pressure [ MPa ]

Indicated mean effective pressure [ MPa ]

(c) Indicated specific THC

(d) Indicated specific CO

1.1

Fig. 7. Comparisons of emissions performance for the four fuel blends at different engine loads. NO EGR is used.

maximum reduction of NOx emissions for D70P30 and D40B30P30

are 8% and 9% compared to that of diesel fuel, respectively.
However, a slight increase can be observed for pentanol blends
at high load. The maximum increase are 9% for D70P30 and 7%
for D40B30P30 at the load of 0.9 MPa and 1.0 MPa. In conventional
diesel engines, NOx formation occurs predominantly in the lean
ame region during the premixed combustion phase. Two of the
most important factors affecting NOx emissions are temperature
and the local fuel/air equivalence ratio [36]. First, pentanol has
higher latent heats of vaporization, leading to lower combustion
temperature which contribute to the reduction of NOx formation.
Second, pentanol has lower cetane number and thus longer ignition delay, which increases the fraction of the fuel burned in the
premixed region and produce a higher concentration of NOx.
Furthermore, the smaller local equivalence ratio associated with
oxygenated pentanol might promote NOx formation as well.
These positive and negative effects counteract each other and
could lead to the variation of NOx emission at different operating
conditions. Therefore, the cooling effect of pentanol was the main
reason for the reduction of NOx emissions at low loads, while the
higher ame temperature and oxygenated characteristic leads to
higher NOx emissions at high loads. The results were in good agreement with the experiments results of other researchers [24].
3.2.2. Soot emissions
The soot emissions for the different test fuels are given in
Fig. 7b. It is clear that the soot emissions rst decrease and then
increase with the increase of engine load for all test fuels. Firstly,
at the low load the higher soot emissions were observed due to
the higher THC emissions. This can be attributed to the lower incylinder gas temperature and equivalence ratio. Then as the engine
load increased from 0.5 MPa to 0.9 MPa, more fuel is injected and

hence soot decreased because of higher in-cylinder temperature

which is benecial for soot oxidation and complete combustion.
However, as the engine load is further increased, more fuel is
injected and hence reduces the ignition delay, which promotes
more diffusion combustion. The soot emissions would be expected
to be higher due to the larger equivalence ratio at high engine load.
All of oxygenated blended fuels showed decreased soot emission throughout the operating conditions, which is especially signicant at high engine load. It is decreased by 52.6%, 68.4% and
73.7% at the load of 1.0 MPa for D70B30, D70P30 and
D40B30P30, respectively. The inuence of oxygen content in fuel
on the reduction in soot emissions is most obvious for the pentanol/biodiesel/diesel blended fuels. The oxygen atoms in fuel
molecules can reduce the soot nuclei formation in local fuel rich
region, and have the potential to promote the soot post-oxidation.
Similar ndings were also reported in the previous studies for
other biodiesel/alcohols/diesel blended fuels [18] and dieseloxygenate blends [37,38]. Meanwhile, the suppression of soot emissions was explained kinetically as a reduction of soot precursor
concentration because of the carbon atom bonded to the oxygen
atom in the molecule by Westbrook [39]. Furthermore, The longer
ignition delay of the pentanol blends results in better air entrainment, which is favorable for premixing and thus soot reduction
as well [40].
3.2.3. THC emissions
The variations of THC emissions for the different blends with
respect to diesel are shown in Fig. 7c. It can be observed that a
declining trend along the increasing engine load for all the fuels.
This can be attributed to the higher in-cylinder temperature with
the increase of engine load. In general, the D70P30 leads to higher
unburned hydrocarbon emissions than D70B30 and D40B30P30.

217

52

48

Diesel
D70B30
D70P30
D40B30P30

44

40
0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

1.0

1.1

Indicated mean effective pressure [MPa]

(a) Indicated thermal efficiency

Indicated Specific Fuel Consumption

[g/kW.h]

Indicated Thermal Efficiency [%]

L. Li et al. / Fuel 156 (2015) 211218

220
Diesel
D70B30
D70P30
D40B30P30

210
200
190
180
170
0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

1.0

1.1

Indicated mean effective pressure [MPa]

(b) Indicated specific fuel consumption

Fig. 8. Comparisons of fuel economy for the four fuel blends at different engine loads. NO EGR is used.

The D70P30 blends have lower cetane number compared with the
other fuel, which results in longer ignition delay and thus lead to a
broader lean combustion zone and quenching effect. Meanwhile,
the higher heat of evaporation of D70P30 also has an inuence
on THC emissions. Moreover, the oxygenated fuel blends show
lower HC emissions than that of the diesel fuel over most of the
load range. The characteristics of oxygen content which favors
the oxidation of unburned hydrocarbon will be the main reason.
Particularly, the D40B30P30 shows the lowest value of THC
emissions compared to other test fuels, which might be due to
the highest oxygen content that causes better oxidation among
the test fuels. On the other hand, the improvement of ignition characteristics associated with the addition of biodiesel with high
cetane number might be another reason.
3.2.4. CO emissions
The formation of CO is mainly due to incomplete combustion
and controlled primarily by the fuel/air equivalence ratio. Fig. 7d
describes the effect of using oxygenated fuel blends on CO emissions at different loads. Similarly to HC emissions, it can be
observed that the CO emissions decrease with increasing engine
load because of the increased in-cylinder gas temperature.
Besides, as discussed above, due to the longer ignition delay and
higher heat of evaporation of D70P30, the mixing process of pilot
injected fuel and air is improved, and some of the fuel will enter
over-lean or over-low temperature regions at the pilot-injection
combustion phase. Results in more CO emissions for D70P30 at
low load. At high load of 1.0 MPa, the CO emissions for D70P30,
D70B30, and D40B30P30 were found to be 43%, 54.8% and 55%
lower than that of diesel fuel. The oxygenated fuels provide higher
local oxygen concentration which could make an important contribution to CO reduction. Sharon [17] also obtained decreased CO
emissions with dieselused palm oilbutanol blends.
3.3. Fuel Economy
Fig. 8 shows the indicated thermal efciency (ITE) and corrected
ISFC proles for all fuel blends under different engine loads. It can
be observed that ITE for all fuels in general decrease with increasing of the engine load because of the higher equivalence ratio and
longer combustion duration, while the curves of ISFC exhibit a
reverse trend as the load increases. Furthermore, the blended fuels
mixed with pentanol present higher fuel efciency than that of the
diesel. As discussed above, the rst main reason is more efcient
combustion due to the advanced combustion phase and decreased
combustion duration, and the second reason is lower heat transfer
loss because of the lower in-cylinder peak temperature. Third, as

Fig. 2 shows, the lower negative work at the pilot-injection combustion stage due to the longer ignition delay also accounts for
the better ITE for pentanol blends. ISFC does not show much difference between D70B30 and diesel fuels. From this it can be interpreted that the addition of biodiesel will not deteriorate thermal
efciency.
4. Conclusions
In this work, different dieselbiodieselpentanol blended fuels
were investigated in terms of combustion, emission characteristics
and economy performance in a single cylinder direct injection
compression ignition engine. Pentanol is used to improve the spray
characteristic and oxygen content of the blended fuels, which is
benecial for the fuelair mixture formation and soot reduction.
In addition, the dieselbiodieselpentanol blended fuels has the
advantage of the possibility to maintain the proper ignition characteristics because of the addition of high ignitability biodiesel.
Overall, the fuel blends with pentanol addition shows shorter combustion duration and higher MHRR during the main combustion
phase. Higher ITE and lower ISFC were also observed for the pentanol blends. Soot emissions decreased with the addition of pentanol and the NOx emissions decreased simultaneously at lowmiddle load while increased at high load compared to the diesel
fuel. The THC emission decreased for all the oxygenated blended
fuels except for D70P30 at low engine loads, and the CO emissions
also increased slightly only for D70P30 at the low engine load.
It can be concluded that the pentanol addition can effectively
reduce the soot and CO emissions without a serious impact on
NOx and THC emissions over a wide load range at the test conditions. Meanwhile, higher ITE and lower ISFC were noticed for pentanol blends due to the improved combustion. It is believed that
pentanol will be a promising oxygenated alternative to achieve
high-efciency and low-emission combustion for future compression ignition engines.
Acknowledgment
This work was sponsored by the Ministry of Science and
Technology of China through the ChinaSingapore Project
2012DFG61960 and the Project of the National Key Basic
Research Plan (Chinese 973 Plan) under Grant No.
2013CB228404.
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