Wojciech Walkowiak

Research of water - fuel microemulsions as fuel for diesel engine

The combustion of fuels is and will be in the nearest future a basic way of acquiring the energy, among others, for transport purposes. Transport causes many threats for natural environment. It produces powders and particulates, together with many gaseous noxious substances and is also the source of noise and vibrations. Sources of propulsion, applied in transport, are almost exclusively piston-combustion engines, among which the dominant role play self-ignition engines. In the light of well-known advantages of these engines, they were accepted as most beneficial sources of car vehicles’ propulsion in nearest decades, provided they meet the requirements of the future legal regulations regarding the environmental protection. The emission of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and particulate matters (PM) is a problem to be solved in modern engines. This constitutes so called targets conflict, consisting in excluding the alternative of both coefficients’ decrease, in the way of regulation the set of an engine and the limiting emissions, permitted by the EURO regulations. From among many different methods of limiting both the formation and emission of NOx, the method of the selective catalytic reduction (SCR) is universally applied. This method requires special installation with the catalyst and the reservoir intended for the „clinically” clean reductive measure. In the aspect of constituting opinions regarding the need of reducing additional installations and media on board the vehicle, it seems that to supply the engine with fuel-water emulsion and especially fuel-water microemulsion becomes an interesting solution.