Quantification of soot nanostructure produced from a diesel engine fueled with C3 ketone

Abstract

The soot emission is an urgent problem that deserves extensive studies to suppress it. The smallest ketone was investigated in this study as a soot suppressor in a diesel engine. The fringe analysis approach was used to quantify the nanostructure characteristics of soot. At first, the image processing parameters were updated for this study, and their effects were explored and interpreted. Image resolution was found to be a crucial parameter in the image analysis process with a spatial resolution of 0.0417 nm/pixel as the best adjustment for the present study. The contrast-limited adaptive histogram equalization approach provided a perfect histogram equalization. A Gaussian low-pass filter with a standard deviation of 1.5 and a filter size of 11 produced the best results. The bottom hat transformation with a structuring element of a five pixels size and zero corners produced the best fringes' representation. A threshold level of 0.8 as Otsu's level provided a better nanostructure's representation. Second, the images of soot from acetone/diesel blends were analyzed using the updated parameters. The addition of acetone reduced the formation of soot in a diesel engine. The fringe length, tortuosity, intensity and alignment were all decreased, while fringe spacing was increased with acetone.