Engine Cycle Simulation of Ethanol and Gasoline Blends

Ethanol is one of many alternative transportation fuels that can be burned in internal combustion engines in the same ways as gasoline and diesel. Compared to hydrogen and electric energy, ethanol is very similar to gasoline in many aspects and can be delivered to end-users by the same infrastructures. It can be produced from biomass and is considered renewable. It is expected that the improvement in fuels over the next 20 years will be by blending biomass-based fuels with fossil fuels using existing technologies in present-day automobiles with only minor modifications, even though the overall costs of using biomass-based fuels are still considerably higher than conventional fuels. Ethanol may represent a significant alternative fuel source, especially during the transition from fossil-based fuels to more exotic power sources.

Mapping engines for flexible fuel vehicles (FFV), however, would be very costly and time consuming, even with the help of model-based engine mapping (MBM). The need for using CAE (computer aided engineering) tools to reduce cost and shorten the time of engine mapping is urgent. In the present research, an ethanol model has been developed using a Ford proprietary engine CAE tool, GESIM (General Engine Simulation program) for the simulation of ethanol and ethanol-gasoline blends. GESIM was then validated against available experimental data in a 3.0L V6 2-valve engine. Results have shown that the new GESIM has successfully predicted the trends of engine burn rates, fuel consumption, exhaust temperature and various exhaust emissions for E22 and E85 fuels without any model calibrations.