ID 395

Effect of fuel viscosity on the atomization of diesel and biodiesel fuels from a single-hole pressure atomizer

 

Abstract:

Biodiesel is a renewable alternative of petroleum diesel fuel, which also produces less pollution from internal combustion engines. The use of biodiesel, either as a direct substitute or blended with petroleum diesel, has increased substantially in recent years. The properties of biodiesel are different from the petroleum counterpart, therefore, it is of essential importance to build a solid understanding of the effect of fuel properties to fuel sprays formation and combustion. In this paper, we present a numerical investigation of the effect of fuel viscosity on the atomization of diesel and biodiesel fuels from a single-hole pressure atomizer. The viscosity of biodiesel fuel is significantly higher than that of petroleum diesel. As a consequence, the primary breakup of a biodiesel jet exhibits very different characteristics from that of a standard diesel jet even the injection conditions are identical. In the present study, 3D direct numerical simulations are performed using the multiphase flow solver, Basilisk. The volume-of-fluid method is used to capture the gas-liquid interface. The Octree adaptive mesh is employed to improve the computation performance.