A Study on the Spray-atomization Characteristics of Diesel-ethanol Blended Fuels in a High Pressure Diesel Injection System

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of ethanol blending ratio and fuel temperature in diesel-ethanol blended fuel on the spray-atomization characteristics in a high pressure common-rail injection system. In this work, a diesel fuel and three blended fuels were used as test fuels. Blended fuels were made by blending ethanol with a purity 99.9% to diesel fuel, from 0% to 30%. In order to keep diesel-ethanol blending stability, 5% of biodiesel fuel as volumetric ratio was added into test fuels. The fuel temperature was controled in steps with 40K, from 290K to 370K. Macroscopic spray characteristics were investigated by analyzing the spray tip penetration and spray cone angle through spray images obtained from visualization system. In addition, in order to study microscopic spray characteristics of ethanol blended fuels, the droplet diameter, was analyzed using the droplet measuring system. It is revealed that the spray tip penetration is similar regardless of ethanol blending ratio. As ethanol blending ratio is increased, the spray cone angle becomes wider. It is shown that the spray cone angle is affected by low viscosity and density of ethanol. As the fuel temperature increases, the spray tip penetration and spray cone angle become shorter and narrower respectively. The SMD of ethanol blending fuels is smaller than that of diesel fuel because of low viscosity and surface tension of ethanol