Performance and emissions of SI engine with additives

Abstract

Abstract In the current economy with rising fuel prices and higher concerns being raised for the safety of the environment, it creates an opportunity to test additives available in the market to achieve lower emissions with an increase in performance. Fuels today provide either higher performance or lower emissions, this study aims in achieving both by combining two additives, namely ethanol and toluene. Ethanol is an additive which helps reduce emissions from a vehicle but reduces the overall performance of the vehicle. While toluene improves the performance of a vehicle tremendously, it has higher emissions when compared to ethanol. Hence, two samples were created to be tested against pure petrol and pure ethanol by combining these two additives with gasoline. Four samples were tested, which were pure petrol, 10% ethanol, 10% ethanol with 5% toluene and 20% ethanol with 5% toluene and were labelled sample A, B, C and D respectively. These four samples were tested against two performance parameters and four emission parameters. Results obtained in this study showed that sample C had the lowest emission and sample D had the highest performance.