Jie Liu, Guangle Li, Shenghua Liu
Jan 20, 2011
Citations
0
Influential Citations
16
Citations
Journal
Energy & Fuels
Abstract
As a kind of alternative energy, ethanol is widely and successfully used in the gasoline engine. However, when it is used in the diesel engine, a cetane number (CN) improver, such as isoamyl nitrite, is generally added in diesel/ethanol blends to compensate for the decrease of CN because of ethanol addition. A combined complicated mechanism for the autoignition of n-heptane/ethanol/isoamyl nitrite mixtures was validated against the shock-tube data and homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) engine combustion experiment. The effects of ethanol and isoamyl nitrite addition on the ignition delay of diesel were studied, where n-heptane was used to simulate diesel. Numerical analyses showed that the addition of ethanol decreased the amount of OH radicals and, consequently, retarded the ignition. The reactive i-C5H11O and NO radicals generated in the isoamyl nitrite thermal decomposition process accelerated the low-temperature reactions and shortened the ignition delay.