Notes

During the Horizon 2020 project LeanShips, a high speed marine
diesel engine, a Volvo Penta D7C-B TA, was converted to dual-fuel
operation to demonstrate the potential of methanol as a marine fuel.

two different methanol injection strategies were
compared: a single point injection (SPI) of methanol in the intake duct
and a multiple point injection (MPI) just before each valve of the six
cylinders.

When dual-fuel operation was changed from pure methanol to MeOH-W
blends, the fuel intake line was decoupled and coupled to the MeOH-W
tank.

In a captivating study, the researches have sought for the results of methanol water blend in the ratios of 50%/50% (MeOH-50), 64%/36% (MeOH-64), 90%/ 10% (MeOH-90) and 100%/0% (which is pure methanol, MeOH-100) that repesenting methanol and water by weight respectiveley. Researchers make use of Volvo Penta high speed marine diesel engine, which was previously transformed into a dual fuel engine within the scope of LeanShips project, by adding another tank housing the Meoh-W blend. The experiment was initiated by diesel-only operation with the addition of MeOH-W which has been increased gradually in small portions untill the maximum possible level has been reached. As a result of study, firstly it can be deducted that, the maximum brake thermal efficiency, stands for useful power output out of fuel in the engine, of 45.9%, which is 3.3% and 4.9% higher than pure methanol and diesel only operation respectively, was achieved with MeOH-50. The was greatest methanol energy fraction (MEF), which stands for the ratio of methanol's lower heating value multiplied by methanol's mass flow divided to the sum of multiplications of lower heating values and mass flows of diesel and methanol, was naturally observed in pure methanol addition. Secondly, the more amount of water in the blend the more risk of misfire in cylinders; however, it was deemed that increasing water content caused lessened NOx emissions. Therefore, the study expressed that water can various benefits such as high brake thermal efficiency, lower nox emissions and lower costs.