Experimental study of spray characteristics of biodiesel blending with diethyl carbonate in a common rail injection system

The objective of this paper is to investigate the spray macroscopic characteristics of biodiesel, diethyl carbonate (DEC)-biodiesel blends and diesel fuel based on a common-rail injection system. The spray tip penetration, spray cone angle and the spray projected area were measured through a high-speed photography method. The experimental results reveal that injection pressure and ambient pressure have significant effects on the spray characteristics. Higher injection pressure makes the spray tip penetration increase, while higher back pressure inside the chamber leads to the enlargement of the spray cone angle. The addition of DEC causes the blends fuels to have a shorter penetration and larger spray projected area, which reveals the potential capacity to improve the atomization process compared with biodiesel. The estimation of spray droplet size indicates that DEC30 generates a smaller Sauter mean diameter (SMD) because of its lower surface tension and viscosity. Model predictions were illustrated and ...