Gasoline/Alcohol Blends: Exhaust Emissions, Performance and Burn-Rate in a Multi-Valve Production Engine

A range of gasoline/alcohol blends containing methanol, ethanol, iso-propanol and n-propanol, up to 5% oxygen content by mass, was tested in a multi-valve production engine to quantify the raw exhaust emissions, performance and burn-rate. A heat-release model was developed to facilitate the quantification of burn-rate. The engine was operated with various control strategies to enable the results to represent the response of different engine types.

With standard open-loop engine calibration the alcohols reduced the equivalence ratio which resulted in increased combustion duration and reduced regulated emissions, while there was no difference between the effects of the different alcohols.