Combination of high cetane diesel fuel and post injection mode in a diesel engine: A path towards lower exhaust emissions

The major objective of the presented work is to explore the effect of post injection (PI) strategy using neat diesel fuel (D100) blended with cetane number enhancer (CNE). The motive behind adding CNE in diesel fuel was to lower its self-ignition temperature and hence delay period subsequently. This can lead to more efficient combustion of post injected fuel which leads to lower incomplete combustion losses. The CNE used was Di-Tert-Butyl Peroxide (DTBP) which was blended with D100 in proportion of 1 % by volume. Initially experiments were conducted with D100 under various PI modes where variation of post injection timing (PIT) as well as post quantity (PQ) was considered. The experimental results showed that implementing PI resulted in lower smoke, unburned hydrocarbon (UHC), carbon monoxide (CO) and nitrogen oxides (NO x ) emissions compared to single injection while affecting fuel consumption negatively. Then after similar experiments under various PI modes were repeated using blends of D100 and DTBP (D/DTBP) and results were compared with D100 case. It was found that addition of CNE in D100 resulted in more complete combustion of post fuel which further reduced CO and UHC emissions. The shorter delay period in case of D/DTBP blend compared to D100 case led to lower NO x emissions as well as higher smoke emissions. The obtained results revealed that PI mode with 3 mg PQ and 20° after top dead center (ATDC) PIT with D/DTBP blend offered 41.18 %, 17.55 %, 64 % and 62.5 % reduction in smoke, NO x , UHC and CO emissions respectively compared to single injection mode using D100 fuel.