Executive Summary : | The Compression Ignition (CI) or diesel engine is widely used IC engines for commercial transportation, automobile, industrial applications and off-grid power generation systems [1]. Owing to the requirement of sustainable alternatives with improved performance and emissions for diesel fuel, alcohols are emerging as favourable option, due to their high oxygen content, better cold start ability, high latent heat of vaporization and low viscosity will exhibit better combustion and emission characteristics when mixed with diesel [2][3][4]. Among all the liquid fuels, methanol possesses highest systemic efficiency and can be produced from various renewable energy resources [1][5] and economically viable fuel to use in CI engine when mixed with diesel. However, the immiscible nature of methanol and diesel mixture makes it challenging to use them as ready fuel. A surfactant will reduces the interfacial surface tension and helps to make a methanol-in-diesel emulsion fuel. In the literature several surfactants were tested and used to prepare stable emulsion fuels, such as n-octanol, butanol, 1-dodecanol, n-hexanol to name a few [6][7]. However, no specific studies related to preparation methodology to obtain stable methanol-in-diesel emulsion with suitable surfactants are presented. This fact motivated us to present a suitable methodology to prepare stable methanol-in-diesel emulsions for use in CI engines with specific focus on maximizing the methanol content. Therefore, present work intends to explore the feasibility of methanol-in-diesel emulsion by using conventional surfactants such as Tween-80 and Span-80 and non-conventional surfactants such as 1-dodecanol. Here, 1-docecanol is employed in view of maximizing the methanol content in the emulsion, the detailed explanation of this is present in the subsequent section of the proposal. Further, effect of these emulsion fuels on performance, combustion and emission characteristics of CI operation will be experimentally investigated. Finally a qualitative and quantitative assessment of variation in CI engine performance using emulsion fuels as compared with baseline diesel fuel (100 %) will be carried out. Also, the compatibility issues that might arise with emulsion fuels on CI engine will be assessed through endurance tests. Outcome of this work will aid efforts in adapting compression ignition engines for diesel-methanol fuel blends. |