Oxidation behaviors and nanostructure of particulate matter produced from a diesel engine fueled with n-pentanol and 2-ethylhexyl nitrate additives

Experiments were performed on a high pressure common-rail diesel engine fueled with D100 (diesel fuel), DP15 (15% n-pentanol and 85% diesel, v/v), DP30 (30% n-pentanol and 70% diesel, v/v), DP30E1 (DP30 and 1000 ppm EHN) and DP30E2 (DP30 and 2000 ppm EHN), respectively. Particulates were sampled from the engine exhaust tailpipe and further analyzed with transmission electron microscope (TEM), Raman spectroscopy (RS) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). Results showed that an increase in soot oxidation reactivity was observed with increasing n-pentanol concentration in diesel/n-pentanol mixtures. This trend was in line with the poorer structural ordering of soot particles generated from blended fuels by both TEM and RS analyses. Regarding the impact of EHN addition to DP30 fuel, the soot oxidation reactivity decreased as the fuel was changed from DP30 to DP30E1, and then increased as the fuel was changed from DP30E1 to DP30E2. Notably, the soot from DP30 + EHN additive was easier to be oxidized than that from DP30. Similarly, the trends in soot oxidation reactivity with EHN additive can qualitatively capture the variations in soot nanostructure. The correlation between soot reactivity and nanostructure in this study was nonlinear, which infers that soot oxidation reactivity would be also influenced by other features like active surface area and surface functional group. It can be suggested that the application of DP30 would significantly affect the regeneration performance of diesel particulate filter (DPF); when the baseline fuel is DP30, the impacts of EHN additives on regeneration performance of DPF are relatively slight.