Xiaohong Gao

A New Approach Of Spark Ignition Engine Fueled with Ethanol

Amid growing concerns about unstable oil supplies and the impact of fossil fuels on global warming, bio-fuels are receiving increased attention. Ethanol bio-fuel could play an important role in reducing fossil fuels consumption and greenhouse gas emissions when applying to the transport facilities. In this article a new approach ethanol steam reforming was introduced for the existing spark ignition engines with few structure changes. Moreover, the waste heat from exhaust can be used as energy source for ethanol steam evaporating and reforming. The combustion characteristics of hydrous-ethanol reforming mixtures gas using a const-volume bomb and high speed schlieren photography technique and the performances of the reformed ethanol engine, such as power, economy and emissions, have been studied. The experimental results indicate that hydrous-ethanol is reformed to hydrogen-rich mixture gas which is an excellent fuel for engines, In addition the hydrogen-rich mixture gas allows operation at much higher compression ratio due to its intrinsic octane number which could contribute to the power performance, and the NOx, CO, THC emissions are reduced remarkably because of lean combustion realized in the cylinder.