Measuring and comparing the ignition delay time of the reference diesel, convectional diesel, additive ethanol and biodiesel from soybean oil using a shock tube.

Abstract

The objective of this work is to correlate the ignition delay times of reference diesel, convectional diesel, ethanol and biodiesel from soybean oil measured in a shock tube with a 5% additive increase in the cetane number. The results were correlated

with the cetane number of the respective fuels and compared with the ignition delay times available in the studies by oth- ers authors. The shock tube is a metal tube in which gas at low pressure and at high pressure is separated by a diaphragm.

When the diaphragm breaks in predetermined conditions (high pressure in this case) produces shock waves that move from

the high-pressure chamber (known driver section) to the low-pressure chamber (known driven section). The tests were per- formed under the following initial conditions: refected shock wave temperature from 903 to 1260 K, equivalence ratio of 1

and refected shock wave pressures of 24 bar. For determining and recording the ignition delay time, pressure sensors with high acquisition rate and luminosity sensors were used. With information from pressure sensors and the luminosity sensor, ignition delay times of reference diesel, convectional diesel, additive ethanol and biodiesel from soybean oil were recorded. We concluded that the ignition delay time of additive ethanol was twice as large as the ignition delay time of reference diesel. The ignition delay time of biodiesel from soybean oil was approximately three times greater than the ignition delay time of reference diesel. The ignition delay time of the reference diesel was smaller than the convectional diesel. The contribution of this work is that it shows why additive ethanol and pure biodiesel should not be used as substitutes for diesel compression ignition engines without any major changes in the engines. The ignition delay times of these fuels are at least two to three times longer than the ignition delay time of reference diesel.