Butanol - A single cylinder engine study: Engine performance

The effect of methanol and butanol addition to gasoline on brake specific fuel consumption (b.s.f.c.), exhaust gas temperature, and thermal efficiency has been experimentally investigated. A Hydra single cylinder, spark ignition, fuel injection engine was used over a wide range of fuel/air equivalence ratio (phi = 0.8 to 1.3) for 30% volume alcohol-gasoline blends. The goal of this work is to study the engine performance when methanol and butanol-gasoline blends are used. The performance measurements show that there is an increase in b.s.f.c. when using alcohol-gasoline blends, and b.s.f.c. of a butanol-gasoline blend is less than for a methanol-gasoline blend. The experimental results show that the engine thermal efficiency was decreased when fueled with alcohol-gasoline blends. It was found that there was about a 4.5% reduction in engine thermal efficiency at phi = 1.0 when 30% butanol was blended with gasoline compared to pure gasoline. The exhaust gas temperature measurements show that there is an increase in temperature in the case of using gasoline as compared to alcohol-gasoline blends, and that the temperature reaches a maximum at phi approximate to 1.1 when using gasoline and alcohol-gasoline blends.