AAAR 32nd Annual Conference
September 30 - October 4, 2013
Oregon Convention Center
Portland, Oregon, USA
Abstract View
Ethanol and Iso-Butanol Gasoline Blends Use in Light Duty Gasoline Direct Injection Vehicles: Real-time Measurements of Particle Number, Sizing, and Composition
DANIEL SHORT, Diep Vu, Georgios Karavalakis, Thomas D. Durbin, Akua Asa-Awuku, University of California, Riverside
Abstract Number: 124 Working Group: Combustion
Abstract Currently, the use of gasoline direct injection (GDI) vehicles is increasing rapidly and their penetration is expected to grow in the near future within the U.S. market. Recent research has shown that GDI vehicles have better fuel economy and emit less greenhouse gas emissions compared to the conventional port fuel injection (PFI) vehicle. However GDI vehicles emit 3 to 4 times more particles than the standard PFI vehicle. Butanol, compared to ethanol, has more energy content and a lower vapor pressure making it a more ideal mixture with gasoline. Changes in fuel composition can modify the emissions of particle and gas-phase compositions. Specifically, the aerosol composition may contain black carbon (BC) and other insoluble material that modify particle nucleating properties.
The goal of this study is to analyze the emissions of two light-duty GDI vehicles tested on a chassis dynamometer. These vehicles are driven on both the Federal Test Procedure (FTP) and the Unified cycle (UC) and at steady state conditions. The fuels used are E10, E15, and E20 ethanol and gasoline mixtures. In addition to ethanol blends, these vehicles used B16, B24, and B32 butanol and gasoline mixtures. Regulated emissions, particle number and sizing, BC concentrations, and fuel economy are measured. BC concentrations are measured real-time with a Multi-Angle Absorption Photometer (MAAP). The size distribution of particles is measured with a scanning mobility particle sizer (SMPS). Additionally, we exploit CPCs of different working fluids to infer real-time insoluble particle mass fractions. Results have shown decreasing particle number with increasing ethanol and butanol concentrations in gasoline on both the FTP and UC driving cycles. In addition, particle emissions from both GDI vehicles are mostly water-insoluble. The results of this study will enhance our understanding of alcohol fuel mixture effects on emissions from emerging vehicle technology.