Experimental investigation of regulated and unregulated emissions from a diesel engine fueled with ultralow-sulfur diesel fuel blended with ethanol and dodecanol

Experiments were conducted on a four-cylinder direct-injection diesel engine using ultralow-sulfur diesel as the main fuel, ethanol as the oxygenate additive and dodecanol as the solvent, to investigate the regulated and unregulated emissions of the engine under five engine loads at an engine speed of 1800 rev min−1. Blended fuels containing 6.1%, 12.2%, 18.2% and 24.2% by volume of ethanol, corresponding to 2%, 4%, 6% and 8% by mass of oxygen in the blended fuel, were used. The results indicate that with an increase in ethanol in the fuel, the brake specific fuel consumption becomes higher while there is little change in the brake thermal efficiency. Regarding the regulated emissions, HC and CO increase significantly at low engine load but might decrease at high engine load, NOx emission slightly decreases at low engine load but slightly increases at high engine load, while particulate mass decreases significantly at high engine load. For the unregulated gaseous emissions, unburned ethanol and acetaldehyde increase but formaldehyde, ethene, ethyne, 1,3-butadiene and BTX (benzene, toluene and xylene) in general decrease, especially at high engine load. A diesel oxidation catalyst (DOC) is found to reduce significantly most of the pollutants, including the air toxics.