10th International Aerosol Conference
September 2 - September 7, 2018
America's Center Convention Complex
St. Louis, Missouri, USA

Abstract View


Effect of Fuel Oxygen Content on Morphology and Nanostructure Characteristics of Diesel Particulate Matter

PUNEET VERMA, Mohammad Jafari, Edmund Pickering, Yi Guo, Svetlana Stevanovic, Richard Brown, Zoran Ristovski, QUT, Australia

     Abstract Number: 447
     Working Group: Combustion

Abstract
There is an increased need for the adoption of oxygenated fuels such as biodiesel, alcohol fuels as an alternative to petroleum-based fuel first of all to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to reduce dependencies on fossil fuels. To understand the soot formation and oxidation process, the morphology and nanostructural characteristics of diesel particulate matter for different fuels has to be investigated in a comprehensive manner. Literature has shown that biodiesel has lower tendency of producing soot emissions compared to petroleum diesel, thus can be a good alternative fuel to counter rising particulate emissions. To understand the effect of fuel oxygen content on morphology and nanostructure characteristics of diesel particulate matter, different fuels such as fatty acid based biodiesel, n-butanol and triacetin were tested in a diesel engine with various mixing proportions. The fuel blending was done in such a way that overall oxygen content of fuel was kept in range of 0 to 14.23% (wt.%). The diesel engine particles emissions were sampled from exhaust with the help of Nanometer Aerosol Sampler (NAS) and collected on 300 mesh holey carbon grids. The samples were then analysed with Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) JEOL-2100 maybe put the model here) to acquire images of soot particles with low and high resolution. A MATLAB based image processing program was developed to characterise the different properties such as primary particle diameter, primary particle number density, fractal dimension, fringe length, fringe tortuosity and fringe separation distance. The change in the above properties as a function of fuel oxygen content will be presented. The notable finding of this investigations has been decrease in primary particle diameter and increase in fractal dimension with increase in fuel oxygen content.