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The evaporation characteristics of multi-component fuel have significant effects on the fuel–air mixing process and subsequent processes, such as ignition, combustion, and harmful pollutants emission formation. When a multi-component fuel is directly injected into the combustion chamber, spatial and temporal equivalence ratio stratification may happen due to the preferential evaporation of components with different volatilities. However, there is a lack of effective optical diagnostics of the spatial stratification in a multi-component fuel spray. In this study, new optical technique based on ultraviolet absorption and visible light schlieren (UAVS) is for the first time proposed to measure the stratification of vapor distributions stratification in a binary-component fuel spray. UAVS technique was applied to investigate the effects of mixing ratios in a binary-component fuel spray (p-xylene and n-hexane) and ambient temperature on the stratification of components with different volatilities. The results denote the UAVS technique as the effective method for the observation of stratification of a multi-component fuel spray. In this study, the stratification phenomenon was the most evident at the ratio of 1:1. At the same time, when the ambient temperature is much higher than the dew point temperature of mixture, the stratification rarely occurs, because of the rapid evaporation thus providing time not enough for preferential evaporation. Graphic abstract

The cyclic variations of vapor distributions of a binary-component fuel spray were experimentally investigated. Ultraviolet–visible laser absorption/scattering technique was adopted for quantitative measurement of vapor mass distributions in a binary-component fuel spray. n-Hexane and p-xylene were chosen to form the binary-component test fuel. Intersection-over-union, an important concept in object detection, was firstly introduced to characterize more precisely the spray cyclic variations, in comparison with other traditional methods including presence probability image and coefficient of variation in spray penetration. As a result, a larger fluctuation was observed in vapor distributions of the higher boiling point component (p-xylene) in the binary-component fuel compared to that of the pure p-xylene spray, indicating that evaporation characteristic of multi-component fuel spray is one of the significant factors that affects the cyclic variations. Based on large amount of experimental observations, a concept of spray vapor distribution area with consideration of cyclic variation was proposed to give a more reasonable expression of spray structure, and a new empirical formula of spray vapor distribution area was given for prediction and numerical model validation.

A three-color imaging technique was proposed for simultaneous measurements on distributions of fuel/air mixture temperature and fuel vapor/liquid concentrations in evaporating sprays. The idea is based on that the vapor concentration is proportional to the absorption of vapor to UV light, the liquid-phase concentration is related to the light extinction due to scattering of droplet to visible light, and the mixture temperature can be correlated to the absorbance ratio at two absorbing wavelengths or narrow bands. For verifying the imaging system, the molar absorption coefficients of p-xylene at the three narrow bands, which were centered respectively at 265, 289, and 532 nm with FWHM of 10 nm, were measured in a specially designed calibration chamber at different temperatures (423–606 K) and pressure of 3.6 bar. It was found that the ratio of the molar absorption coefficients of p-xylene at the two narrow bands centered at the two UV wavelengths is sensitive to the mixture temperature. On the other hand, the distributions of fuel vapor/liquid concentrations can be obtained by use of absorbance due to ultraviolet absorption of vapor and visible light scattering of droplets. Combining these two methods, a simultaneous measurement on distributions of mixture temperature and fuel vapor/liquid concentrations can be realized. In addition, the temperature field obtained from the ratio of the two absorbing narrow bands can be further used to improve the measurement accuracy of vapor/liquid concentrations, because the absorption coefficients depend on temperature. This diagnostic was applied to an evaporating spray inside a high-temperature and high-pressure constant volume chamber.

This paper explores the characteristics of absorption and fluorescence spectra of p-xylene within the temperature range that is frequently encountered during the mixture formation in internal combustion engines. At 266 nm wavelength, the p-xylene absorption cross section shows a mean value of (3.4 ± 0.2) × 10−19 cm2/molecule within the temperature range from 423 to 623 K in N2. As expected, fluorescence peak intensity decreases by a factor of 3 when the temperature increases by 100 K, due to a increasing non-radiative decay rate of excited state at increasing temperatures. In addition, the suitability of p-xylene for temperature measurements in the gas phase via the single-wavelength excitation (at 266 nm) two-color detection laser-induced fluorescence imaging is explored. Combinations of spectral detection bands were compared and the combination of 320/289 nm provides the best temperature performance with a relative error of 2.6% within the investigated temperature range. It is also shown that the temperature field measurement has not been strongly affected by the laser attenuation.

Measurements of liquid phase temperature distributions in liquid–vapor co-existing conditions (such as in evaporating sprays) are important to understand the physics of droplet evaporation. The techniques based on laser-induced fluorescence are not suitable for evaporating case since both liquid and vapor phases emit fluorescence with the same wavelength. In this study, the fluorescence from liquid and vapor phases was separated by use of laser-induced exciplex fluorescence (LIEF) technique. Two fluorescence bands from the liquid phase fluorescence spectra were detected simultaneously, and their intensity ratio was correlated to the liquid phase temperature. For the LIEF imaging system, FB-DEMA-n-hexane was selected as it was a typical LIEF system for the vapor concentration diagnostic, and thus easily to be extended to a simultaneous diagnostic on the vapor concentration and the droplet temperature. The fluorescence spectra were obtained in the temperature range from 303 to 423 K. The effects of liquid temperature, liquid pressure, dopant concentration and laser energy on the temperature measurement were investigated. The results show a good linear relationship between the fluorescence ratio and the temperature function. Increasing the dopant concentration can raise the signal-to-noise ratio but deteriorate temperature sensitivity. The optimal range of the dopant concentration was found between 0.1 % and 0.5 %. After calibration, the technique was applied to a monosized droplet stream, and the measurement results demonstrated excellent measurement accuracy with error below 1 % in the range of 303–423 K.