Energy & Fuels, Vol.33, No.3, 2477-2488, 2019
Blended E85-Diesel Fuel Droplet Heating and Evaporation
The multidimensional quasi-discrete (MDQD) model is applied to the analysis of heating and evaporation of mixtures of E85 (85 vol % ethanol and 15 vol % gasoline) with diesel fuel, commonly known as "E85-diesel" blends, using the universal quasi-chemical functional group activity coefficients model for the calculation of vapor pressure. The contribution of 119 components of E85-diesel fuel blends is taken into account, but replaced with smaller number of components/quasicomponents, under conditions representative of diesel engines. Our results show that high fractions of E85-diesel fuel blends have a significant impact on the evolutions of droplet radii and surface temperatures. For instance, droplet lifetime and surface temperature for a blend of 50 vol % E85 and 50 vol % diesel are 23.2% and up to 3.4% less than those of pure diesel fuel, respectively. The application of the MDQD model has improved the computational efficiency significantly with minimal sacrifice to accuracy. This approach leads to a saving of up to 86.4% of CPU time when reducing the 119 components to 16 components/quasi-components without a sacrifice to the main features of the model.