Numerical simulation of the effect of adding oxygenated fuel (ethanol) to commercial gasoline on engine performance and NOx emissions

Abstract Spark-ignition engines are still widely used in the transport sector. With the price of oil continuing to rise and fossil fuel reserves dwindling, the appeal of renewable alternative fuels is felt. It is therefore with a view to verifying the influence of the integration of different oxygenated fuels in petrol on engine performance and pollutant emissions that this experimental and numerical research was conducted. Ethanol, which is an oxygenated fuel, has been tested in blends with unleaded commercial gasoline at concentrations of 10%, 20%, 30% and 40% in a spark-ignition engine. Little variation was diagnosed in the stability of combustion. It was also observed that the addition of oxygenated fuels led to a significant decrease in NOx emissions of 7.5% for E10 (10% ethanol + 90% unleaded commercial gasoline) with the maintenance of engine performance (torque and power). This is probably due to a lower combustion temperature. A numerical study confirmed the experimental data for performance, torque and power. However, the multi-resource DIESEL RK software used for this study was developed to account for the effect of the chemical composition of a given fuel on its ability to form NOx emissions, particularly in the case of ethanol. To do this, the numerical study confirmed the experimental trends for E10, E20, E30 and E40 with a mean divergence value ranging from 0.48% to 5.07%.