Combustion performance and emissions characteristics of 2-methyltetrahydrofuran and cyclopentanone in a DISI engine

Olalere, Rafiu Kayode ORCID: 0009-0004-6247-3994 (2025). Combustion performance and emissions characteristics of 2-methyltetrahydrofuran and cyclopentanone in a DISI engine. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

This thesis examines the performance of 2-Methyltetrahydrofuran (MTHF) and Cyclopentanone (CP) fuels to various engine parameters, in particular, engine load, Air fuel ratio (AFR), Spark timing and fuel injection pressure. The effect of the gasoline blends of the two oxygenated fuels were also investigated along with single pulse fuel injections and split injection strategy. 2-Methylfuran (MF), Ethanol and gasoline were used as the based fuel for the study. A spray-guided single-cylinder direct injection spark ignition (DISI) engine was used for the experimentation. Horiba MEXA-7100DEGR Gas Analyser is used to measure gaseous emissions such as hydrocarbon (HC), nitrogen oxide (NOx) and carbon monoxide (CO). Aldehyde emissions and key HCs have been investigated using a Gasmet FTIR. Cambustion DMS 500 is used to measure the particle size distributions. Both MTHF and CP fuels recorded specific fuel consumption advantage over MF and Ethanol and closer to ULG daunting the insinuations that the oxygenated fuels generally lack fuel economy advantages. Due to its higher octane number and faster burning rate, the peak in-cylinder pressure for CP at the high load of 8.5 bar indicated mean effective pressure of about 32.7 % and 34.1 % higher than gasoline and MTHF respectively. The specific fuel consumption and the indicated thermal efficiency for both CP and MTHF was optimised at 1< λ < 1.1. Overall, the optimal fuel injection timing for single pulse width for both CP and MTHF was found to be at 270degbTDCcomb for higher efficiency. However, the optimal timing selected was at the instance of trade off for CO and HC emissions which were both optimised at 240degbTDCcomb. Experiments suggested that split-injection can improve the combustion and emission performance of CP and MTHF but maximum gains were recorded with greater pulse ratios of 2:1 due to improved vaporisation at this pulse ratio. The engine out emission of isNOx is generally higher for CP and MTHF compared to MF, gasoline and Ethanol. However, both CP and MTHF recorded hydrocarbon emissions advantage over MF and ULG. While the higher blends ratio favour the improved engine combustion performance, it comes with unique challenges of higher NOx emissions and fuel consumption penalty. Ethylene, with recorded components percentage of the HC emissions of 21.9% for MF20, 23.7% for MTF20 and 23.2% for gasoline, consistently remains the highest proportions of HC emissions for the three fuels. Experiments result indicated that the percentage of the unburned furan fuels in the total HC emissions for MF20 and MTHF20 were 1.2 and 1.4 respectively.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):