The purpose of this study is to investigate the possibility of acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) blended with diesel without further component recovery which has high costs blocking the industrial-scale production of bio-butanol. The combustion characteristics of ABE and diesel blends were studied in a constant volume chamber. In this study, 50% and 80% vol. ABE (without water) were mixed with diesel and the vol. % of acetone, butanol and ethanol were kept at 30%, 60% and 10% respectively. The in-cylinder pressure was recorded using a pressure transducer and the time-resolved natural luminosity was captured by high speed imaging. Combustion visualization using laser diagnostics would provide crucial fundamental information of the fuel's combustion characteristics.
With the different percentage of the ABE blended in the diesel, the soot oxidation, the ignition delay and the soot lift-off length were studied in this work. As the increase percentage of the ABE in the blends, the trend for the combustion characteristics is better than the pure diesel (D100). Combing with the low temperature combustion (LTC) and the higher percent ABE in blends, based on the results analysis, it could be found that at low ambient temperature of 800 K, the ABE blends presented close-to-zero soot luminosity with better combustion efficiency. Comparing to D100, the ABE is a very proper alternative fuel to be directly used in diesel engines especially under LTC conditions.