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This research investigates the effect of nanoparticle-diesel fuel blends on combustion characteristics, performances and exhaust emissions of a four-stroke single-cylinder diesel engine. Three types of nanoparticles employed in this experiment were aluminium oxide, carbon nanotubes and silicon oxide. The nanoparticles were dispersed in a dosage of 25 ppm, 50 ppm and 100 ppm with pure diesel and were labelled as DA25, DA50, DA100 (aluminium oxide blends), DC25, DC50, DC100 (carbon nanotubes blends) and DS25, DS50, DS100 (silicon oxide blends). The ultraviolet-visible spectrophotometer analysis was done for 200 h to quantify the stability of the nanoparticle-diesel fuel blends. The blended fuels were experimentally tested with YANMAR TF120M diesel engine at engine loads of 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% at a constant 1800 rpm engine speed. The results revealed that the brake specific fuel consumption reduced by up to 19.8% and brake thermal efficiency enhanced by 18.8%. Silicon oxide blends show better results than aluminium oxide blends in many aspects, such as higher combustion pressure, lower brake specific fuel consumption and lower carbon monoxide emissions. Aluminium oxide and silicon oxide show stable blend conditions with 28.1% and 22.0% absorption ratio at 200 h sedimentation time, while carbon nanotube blends were least stable with absorption ratio reducing to less than 30% after 10 h. Combustion analysis of carbon nanotube blends with diesel show that carbon nanotubes have the potential to be further researched as an additive for diesel fuel due to significant combustion improvement in NO x emissions. However, the issue on the stability of carbon nanotube blends must be resolved before its potential can be fully utilized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Petroleum-based fuels have been one of the most in demand energy source for various purposes and application. However, rigorous emissions from petroleum-based fuels have forced many governments to introduce stringent regulations and concerns over energy security. Alternative fuel such as short-chain alcohol (methanol and ethanol) had been used as an oxygenated element to increase oxygen content in diesel fuel (DF). However, short-chain alcohol-diesel blends have disadvantages such as low cetane number, low heating value, increase of hydrocarbons (HC) and low miscibility with DF. Recently, researchers have shown interest on long-chain alcohols which have better physicochemical properties than short-chain alcohol. In this experiment, 5%, 10% and 20% of 2-ethyl 1-hexanol (2-EH) was added into DF to produce long-chain alcohol-diesel fuel blends. The fuel blends were prepared by using Hielscher UP400S ultrasonic emulsifier machine at 20% Hz stirring speed. The discussion will focus on combustion characteristics, engine performance and exhaust emissions of single cylinder diesel engine YANMAR TF120M at constant engine speed of 1800 rpm under various loads (0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%). The results show that HE5 has the preeminent properties among fuel blends in terms of calorific value (45.87 MJ/kg), density (806.1 kg/m 3 ) and viscosity (3.02 mPa·s). Performance analysis shows BTE had increased by 91.72%, while BSFC had decreased by 45.22% for 5% 2-EH (HE5). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]