Emissions from Petrol Engine Fueled Gasoline–Ethanol–Methanol (GEM) Ternary mixture as Alternative Fuel

¹ Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Science, Swinburne University of Technology, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia
² Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Skudai, Johor D.T., Malaysia

^a Corresponding author: sthangavelu@swinburne.edu.my
^b pchelladorai@swinburne.edu.my
^c farid@fkm.utm.my

Abstract

The increasing demands of petroleum fuels due to the rapid development automotive society coupled with the environmental pollution issues have inspired the efforts on exploring alternative fuels for internal combustion engines. Bioethanol obtained from biomass and bioenergy crops has been proclaimed as one of the feasible alternative to gasoline. In this study, the effect of gasoline–ethanol–methanol (GEM) ternary blend on the emission characteristics of petrol engine was studied. Three different fuel blends, namely, E0 (gasoline), G75E21M4 (75% gasoline, 21% hydrous ethanol and 4% methanol) and E25 (25% anhydrous ethanol and 75% gasoline) were tested in a 1.3-l K3-VE spark-ignition engine. The results indicate that, when G75E21M4 fuel blend was used, a significant drop in CO, CO2, NOx and HC emissions by about 42%, 15%, 7% and 5.2% compared to E0, respectively. Moreover, the emission results for G75E21M4 are marginally lower than E25 whereas; HC emission was slightly higher than E25.