E85 in a diesel dual-fuel?

[BLSTIC]

I keep hearing about adding a second fuel for diesels. Basically use the diesel injector as a hugely powerful spark plug to ignite a high octane fuel.

Is it conceivable to run E85 as that secondary fuel? With an already occuring flame front surely you could ignite ultra-lean mixtures and keep the whole 'fuelling controls load' thing going on, with a relatively simple injection system...

Note that E85 is not available at a bowser within 1000 miles of me, I have no idea of its pricing so it may not be viable. But is it possible?

[rmay635703]

This was done by MIT, when using diesel dual fuel you can run hydrous ethanol even in the winter and get away with a non turbo diesel and still have 300+hp. Too bad the emissions folks hate multifuel engines with a passion.

Too bad chevy wouldn't re-engineer their old olds cast iron diesel into a 2.8ltr DI dual fuel, 300hp and naturally aspirated diesel fuel economy would be a welcome change.

Add atkinson cycle and remove the urea

[BLSTIC]

I'm not sure you could have 300hp in any passenger sized diesel without boost... I mean they simply don't rev hard enough for their displacement. Unless you could modify one of those 350 chev diesels... However without the limits on detonation or lean-burning you could certainly do some interesting things.

By hydrous ethanol do you mean mixed with water?

Actually, how does water/alcohol injection work on a diesel when there is no extra fuel added through the pump (i.e. it all comes with the water/alky mixture)?

I have a plot cooking... Give me a few minutes to clear up exactly what my idea is, then a couple more to type it down...

*edit: Plot not feasible for my own testing. But... Mix ethanol and water into regular unleaded for low energy content buy high octane fuel?

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

It's viable to use an ethanol secondary injection, but I'd rather do it with either E100 or E96h. BTW Iveco is testing a dual-fuel Diesel-E96h truck in Brazil in partnership with Raízen (a joint-venture between Shell and Cosan, one of the biggest ethanol producers in the world).

Anyway, you might remember Scania already makes some compression-ignition engines powered by ethanol, and altough they're not E85-certified they may eventually work with it.