Net-Zero emission ambitions coupled with availability of oxygenated fuels like ethanol encouraged the Government towards commercial implementation of fuels like E20. In this background, a study was taken up to assess the impact of alcohol blended fuels on performance and emission characteristics of a BS-VI complaint motorbike. A single cylinder, 113-cc spark ignition, ECU based electronic fuel injection motorbike was used for conducting tests. Pure gasoline (E0), 10% ethanol-gasoline (E10), 20% ethanol-gasoline (E20) and 15% methanol-gasoline (M15) blends meeting respective IS standards were used as test fuels. The oxygen content of E10, E20 and M15 fuels were 3.7%, 7.4% and 8.35% by weight respectively. Experiments were conducted following worldwide motorcycle test cycle (WMTC) as per AIS 137 standard and wide-open-throttle (WOT) test cycle, using chassis dynamometer.
The experimental results on WMTC tests indicated that the fuel consumption of the vehicle increased with increase in oxygen content of the test fuels. The maximum increase in fuel consumption was 6.40% with M15 fuel as compared to E0 fuel. CO2 emission decreased moderately with the use of oxygenated fuels due to lower carbon content. CO and THC emissions decreased with oxygenated fuels and E20 fuel resulted in lowest level compared to all other test fuels. NOx emission increased linearly with increase in oxygen content of the test fuels and M15 recorded the highest. Under WOT conditions, the carbon emissions (CO, THC) decreased significantly with oxygenated fuels, with increase in NOx emission due to better combustion. However, CO2 emission was higher for oxygenated fuels due to high fuel consumption to achieve desired power output under full load operation. Overall, the alcohol blends help to decrease the CO and THC emissions with slight penalty on fuel economy. Fine-tuning of ECU parameters specific to fuel, has potential to improve fuel economy while reducing emissions.