EXHAUST GAS ANALYSIS AND PARAMETRIC STUDY OF ETHANOL BLENDED GASOLINE FUEL IN SPARK IGNITION ENGINE

Abstract

Today, the reserves of petroleum based fuels are being rapidly depleted. It is well known that the future availability of energy resources, as well as the need for reducing CO2 emissions from the fuels used has increased the need for the utilization of regenerative fuels .Various substitutes are available to use Gasoline in SI engines with the possibility of reducing harmful exhaust gas emissions. Ethanol is a renewable fuel. It can be produced from agricultural feed stocks, such as sugarcane and also from forestry wood wastes and agricultural residues. This research is done taking commercial gasoline as reference which is originally blended with 5% ethanol. Hence 5%, 10%, 15%, 20% ethanol blends with Gasoline including the blended ethanol initially was tested in SI engines. Physical properties relevant to the fuel were determined for the four blends of gasoline. A four cylinder, four stroke, varying rpm, Petrol (MPFI) engine connected to eddy current type dynamometer was run on blends containing 5%,10%,15%,20% blends and performance characteristics, maximum pressure induced and exhaust emissions were evaluated. In terms of octane number and density, ethanol has higher value while the calorific value of gasoline is higher than ethanol. Even though higher blends can replace gasoline in a SI engine, results showed that there is a reduction in exhaust gases and increase in Mechanical efficiency, Specific Fuel Consumption and Indicated Thermal Efficiency on blending. Maximum pressure reached also increases with blending. Hence we can conclude from the result that using 10% ethanol blend is most effective and we can utilize it for further use in SI engines with little constraint on material used to sustain little increase in pressure.