Chemical Kinetic Modeling Study on the Influence of n-Butanol Blending on the Combustion, Autoignition, and Knock Properties of Gasoline and Its Surrogate in a Spark-Ignition Engine

The ability of a mechanism describing the oxidation kinetics of toluene reference fuel (TRF)/n-butanol mixtures to predict the impact of n-butanol blending at 20% by volume on the autoignition and knock properties of gasoline has been investigated under conditions of a strongly supercharged spark-ignition (SI) engine. Simulations were performed using the LOGEengine code for stoichiometric fuel/air mixtures at intake temperature and pressure conditions of 320 K and 1.6 bar, respectively, for a range of spark timings. At the later spark timing of 6° crank angle (CA) before top dead center (BTDC), the predicted knock onsets for a gasoline surrogate (TRF) and the TRF/n-butanol blend are higher compared to the measurements, which is consistent with an earlier study of ignition delay times predicted in a rapid compression machine (RCM; Agbro, E.; Tomlin, A. S.; Lawes, M.; Park, S.; Sarathy, S. M. The influence of n-butanol blending on the ignition delay times of gasoline and its surrogate at high pressures. Fue...