Performance and emission of diesel engine operating on diesel-propane blends

High pressure nitrogen was used to liquefy propane under the normal temperature obtaining the sufficient and uniform mixing of propane and diesel with different proportions. Engine performance and emissions were investigated in a direct-injection diesel engine with diesel fuel and the diesel-propane blends. The results show that when the proportion of propane in the blends increases from 0 to 14%, the effective thermal efficiency increases from 31.6% to 33.7%, the brake specific fuel consumption decreases from 268.3 g/(kW·h) to 248.6 g/(kW·h), the CO emission falls from 0.059% to 0.046%, the HC emission descends from 45 × 10^-6 to 21.8 × 10^-6, and the smoke emission goes down from 1.057 m^-1 to 0.364 m^-1, however the NO_x emission rises from 730 × 10^-6 to 1226 × 10^-6.