Impact of alcohol gasoline on fuel consumption and tailpipe emissions of a China IV passenger car

Application of renewable energy is an effective way to control the excessive petroleum consumption in transportation sector. However, there is a worthy concern about the applicability of alternative fuel on in-use vehicles and the variation of exhaust emissions when switching from the traditional gasoline to a new fuel. This paper is aimed to investigate the impact of two typical kinds of alcohol gasoline, E10 and M15, on fuel consumption and tailpipe emissions of a late-model multi-port fuel injection (PFI) passenger vehicle over the worldwide harmonized light-duty test cycle (WLTC). The results showed that fuel consumption and CO
₂
emissions of the test vehicle with both E10 and M15 were higher than that with gasoline. E10 reduced most of the gaseous and particulate emissions, except NOx, while M15 deteriorated the exhaust emissions seriously, especially for the THC and PN emissions those increased by approximately 3.4 and 4.6 times. The most likely reason was that M15 did not match the configuration of engine and emission control system of this test vehicle. Other studies about fuel consumption and tailpipe emissions after traditional gasoline replaced by alcohol gasoline has also revealed the deterioration when the alcohol gasoline didn't match the vehicle configuration, which would result in some negative impact on the atmospheric environment.