Development of Empirical Correlations for Ignition Delay in a Single Cylinder Engine Fueled with Diesel/Biodiesel Blends

Quantifying ignition delay for fuel-air mixture in compression ignition engines is very challenging as it depends on many factors such as: fuel properties, injection temperature and pressure, level of swirl and turbulence, and the mixture forming method. This paper presents an approach to develop empirical correlations for ignition delay in a single cylinder engine powered by diesel/biodiesel blends. The engine used here is retrofitted from a cetane testing CFR-F5 engine. The fuels tested in this study include commercial diesel (BO), pure biodiesel (B100) and blends of 20%, 40%, and 60% of the biodiesel in biodiesel-diesel mixtures (B20, B40, B60 and B100, respectively). The blends are injected into the cylinder under different physical conditions (temperature and pressure). Ignition delay time is experimentally investigated and used to develop empirical correlations for ignition delay.