IMPROVING COLD IGNITION PERFORMANCE OF ALCOHOL FUELED ENGINES

IMPROVING COLD IGNITION PERFORMANCE OF ALCOHOL FUELED ENGINES

ABSTRACT

               Alcohols have been identified as having the potential to improve air quality when used to replace conventional gasoline. The use of neat alcohols gives greater benefits than fuels containing lower levels of alcohols but neat alcohol Vehicles exhibits poor cold ignition performance below 11° Celsius, alcohol will not form a rich enough fuel vapor-air mixture to support combustion. Additional technology must be employed to provide acceptable cold start performance. We will focus on the development of hydrogen fuel enrichment technology to aid in the cold start performance of an engine operating on different alcohols such as ethanol, methanol. We focus on a temporary fuel called as reformat for just starting in cold weather after which engine starts on its usual fuel. The reformat is not stored in vehicle but it is produced in vehicle it self by partial oxidation of fuel (rich combustion of fuel i.e. of alcohol which creates a product stream that contains significant amount of hydrogen and carbon monoxide along with carbon dioxide, nitrogen, water vapor and organics) and a reformat is prepared which is supplied to engine. The hydrogen and carbon monoxide are combustible and non-condensate and provides the fuel for starting the engine. Once the engine is starts, the engine transition to the normal fuel system. Also, this reformat has a significant effect on cold start exhaust emissions particularly on HC and CO content in exhaust emissions and some change in CO2 emissions.