Measurement of vapor/liquid distributions in a binary-component fuel spray using laser imaging of droplet scattering and vapor absorption

Fuel volatility has a great effect on its evaporation processes and the mixture formation and thus combustion and emissions formation processes in internal combustion engines. To date, however, instead of the actual gasoline or diesel fuel, many researchers have been using single-component fuel in their studies, because the composition of the former is too complicated to understand the real physics behind the evaporation and combustion characteristics. Several research groups have reported their results on droplets evaporation in a spray of multi-component fuel, carried out both numerically and experimentally. However, there are plenty of difficulties in quantitative determination of vapor concentration and droplet distributions of each component in a multicomponent fuel spray. In this study, to determine the vapor phase concentration and droplet distributions in an evaporating binary component fuel spray, a laser diagnostics based on laser extinction by droplet scattering and vapor absorption was developed. In practice, measurements of the vapor concentration distributions of the lower (n-tridencane) and higher (n-octane) volatility components in the binary component fuel sprays have been carried out at ambient temperatures of 473K and 573K, by substituting p -xylene for noctane or α-methylnaphthalene for n-tridecane. p -Xylene and α-methylnaphthalene were selected as the substitutes is because they have strong absorption band near 266nm and transparent near 532nm and, their thermo-physical properties are similar to those of the original component. As a demonstration experiment, vapor/liquid distribution of the lower boiling point (LBP) and higher boiling point (HBP) components in the binary component fuel spray have been obtained.