Microexplosion Kinetics of Alcohol-Based Emulsified Biodiesel Droplets Evaporated in High Temperature
Publication: Journal of Energy Engineering
Volume 147, Issue 6
Abstract
An alcohol-based emulsified fuel is formed by mixing ethanol, biodiesel, and water in different proportions. This fuel can be used in internal combustion engines to reduce fossil fuel consumption. In high-temperature environments, the microexplosion phenomenon of alcohol-based emulsified fuel can be observed directly. In this study, a high-temperature fuel evaporation test device was set up. The microexplosion process of alcohol-based emulsified fuel with varying water content (0%, 1%, 2%, and 3%) in different temperatures (773 K, 873 K, and 973 K) was studied by high-speed photography, and the data were analyzed by morphological treatment. To evaluate the microexplosion characteristics of alcohol-based emulsified fuel, some kinetic parameters—such as microexplosion delay, mean interfacial tension, number of bubbles, and mean microexplosion intensity—were proposed. The results show that the kinetic parameters put forward in this paper are reasonable for evaluating the microexplosion process. If the water content in the alcohol-based emulsified fuel is kept the same, the microexplosion delay decreases, while the mean interfacial tension increases with increasing temperature. If the evaporation temperature is kept the same, the microexplosion delay and the number of bubbles increase with the content of water increasing. Within the range of tested content of water and temperature, the mean microexplosion intensity of emulsion fuel is 0.05366 when the temperature is 973 K and the content of water is 3%, which is the largest.
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Data Availability Statement
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
We acknowledge funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (under Grant No. 51776089), Project of Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20200910), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions of China (20KJB470013, 20KJB470015), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation Project (2019M651732), and Open Project of State Key Laboratory of Internal Combustion Engine Combustion, Tianjin University (K2020-12). Authors Jialong Zhu and Ruina Li contributed equally to this work.
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Published In
Journal of Energy Engineering
Volume 147 • Issue 6 • December 2021
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© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Apr 15, 2021
Accepted: Jul 1, 2021
Published online: Sep 21, 2021
Published in print: Dec 1, 2021
Discussion open until: Feb 21, 2022
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