COMPARATIVE STUDY OF GAS-TO-LIQUID (GTL) AS AN ALTERNATIVE FUEL USED IN A DIRECT INJECTION COMPRESSION IGNITION ENGINE

This paper investigates the combustion and emission characteristics of a compression ignition engine fueled with neat and blended Shell's gas-to-liquid (GTL) fuel, which was derived from natural gas through the Fischer-Tropsch process. The experiments were conducted in a 6-cylinder DI diesel engine with pump timing settings of $6^{\circ},\;9^{\circ}\;and\;12^{\circ}$crank angle before TDC over ECE R49 and US 13-mode cycles separately and compared to a conventional diesel fuel. The results show that GTL exhibited almost the same power and torque output, improved fuel economy and effective thermal efficiency. It was found that GTL displayed lower peak in-cylinder combustion pressure and maximum heat release rate (HRR), the timings of the peak pressure and the maximum HRR were generally delayed, and the combustion durations were almost equivalent for diesel and GTL under the same speed-load condition. The results also indicate that, compared to diesel fuel, GTL blends showed a trend forward decreasing four regulated emissions simultaneously and a higher GTL fraction in blends contributing to further reductions in the emissions. In particular and on average, neat GTL significantly reduced HC, CO, NOx and PM by 16.4%, 17.8%, 18.3% and 32.4%, respectively, for all cases.