Experimental study of the performance and emissions characteristics of fusel oil/gasoline blends in spark ignited engine using response surface methodology

The principal aim of this study is to use fusel oil which is a waste product obtaining as by-product from the ethanol production processes of sugar factories as an alternative energy source to gasoline in a spark ignition (SI) engine. The secondary purpose of this research is to define the optimum operating parameters such as compression ratio (CR), load and fusel oil percentage concerning the performance and emissions of SI engine by Response Surface Methodology (RSM). The tests of this research have been performed by several fusel oil-gasoline blends (0% and 30%), various CR (8.00, 8.50 and 9.12) and different engine load (1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, 5000 and 6000-W). According to obtained data from experiments, the RSM optimization is employed to maximize brake thermal efficiency (BTE) and minimize the brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC), nitrogen oxides (NOx), hydrocarbon emission (HC), carbon monoxide (CO) and carbon dioxide (CO2). RSM study showed that, fusel oil percentage of 30% at 8.39 CR and 3777-Watt engine load are the optimum engine operating parameters. Moreover, the optimum responses with a high desirability of 0.7685 were 22.47%, 391.43 g/kWh, 188.86 ppm, 12.46%, 1.78% and 131.91 ppm for BTE, BSFC, NOx , CO2 , CO and HC emissions respectively. The results show that, RSM can help to estimate and optimize the optimum engine working parameters for improved the performance and emissions of engine with fewer tests. The outcomes stated future focus of similar research into optimization of fusel oil/gasoline fuel blends.