Surrogate fuel formulation for light Naphtha fuel

Abstract

Light naphtha is a light fraction and less processed refinery product. Hence, it is more economical to produce than the conventional gasoline and diesel fuels. Recently, light naphtha was proposed as a future fuel for advanced combustion engines. In this research, a motored engine study using premixed charge of fuel and air was performed to develop and formulate surrogate fuels for the light naphtha. Experiments were performed by delivering a premixed charge of fuel and air at equivalence ratio of 0.33 and intake temperature of 150oC. The engine speed was fixed at 600 rpm. The compression ratio was increased in a stepwise manner to increase the extent of reaction until a point where significant evolution of carbon dioxide (CO2), indicative of high temperature heat release, was observed. In light of detailed hydrocarbon analysis (DHA), four surrogate fuels were created with two-, three-, four-, and five-palette compounds. RON 66 is the selected property of the light naphtha that is to be matched by the surrogate fuels. Results showed the impact of the hydrocarbon classes on the autoignition and demonstrated that among the four surrogate fuels, the five-component surrogate satisfactorily resembles the autoignition behavior of the light naphtha.