Experimental study on spray characteristics of ethanol-aviation kerosene blended fuel with a high-pressure common rail injection system

Partial replacement of fossil fuels by biomass based alternative fuels is considered as a possible option toward sustainability in aviation applications. The present work aims to study the changes in the spray characteristics in a pressure vessel when operated with aviation kerosene and ethanol-aviation kerosene blended fuel in a high-pressure common rail injection system. This research proposes the concept of adding a certain percentage of ethanol to aviation kerosene, creating ethanol-aviation kerosene blended fuel, which can decrease our reliance on fossil fuels on some level. The spray characteristics of the blended fuel, like spray tip penetration, spray cone angle and spray area, are studied in our work. Through the analysis, we can find that the atomization conditions have a significant impact on the spray characteristics of the aviation kerosene. Similarly, the experimental results show that the addition of ethanol has certain effect on the spray characteristics of the aviation kerosene. And the empirical equations applied in this study to predicting spray tip penetration and spray tip velocity provide a good agreement with the experimental data in the error-allowed range. (C) 2017 Energy Institute. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.