The paper deals with the development of a system to feed water (or ethanol) in fuel oil emulsions into internal combustion diesel engines. Such a system can be installed on board of the engine itself, the two compounds (fuel and dispersed phase) being stored into two separate tanks.
A description of the emulsification system sections is given. The main relevant and innovative components are also described. Tests on a scaled down model are presented and results deeply analyzed.
On the basis of such results a prototype for a 382 kW, 2800 rpm, six cylinder diesel engine has been built and tested. Results show the capabilities of such an Emulsion Engine Feeding System (EEFS) to have downstream of the injector spray drops where the dispersed phase droplets are uniformly distributed with diameters less than 1μm for a wide range of operating conditions. Emulsion quality (i.e. drop diameter of the dispersed phase, diameter distribution of the water droplets, water to oil volumetric mixing ratio versus fuel flow rate) are controlled by the appropriate EEFS components dimensioning and process parameters setting.
Viscosity influence and dynamic behavior have also been analyzed and discussed.