Thermal analysis of natural gas as an alternative fuel for gasoline engine

Abstract

Transport sector is one of the highly emerging industries which consume a million barrels of petroleum fuels like gasoline and diesel per day. Consequently, petroleum fuels are getting exhausted day-by-day. Energy supply for growing demand from the transport sector would be difficult to combat in the near future. This crisis has led to the avenue for alternative fuels to be one of the solutions. Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) has been successfully used as one of the alternative fuel worldwide. However, the design features of the gasoline operated engines are facing certain issue related to performance, consistency and reliability of the engine when it was switched to CNG as prime fuel. Distinct researchers have worked on the issue to find an appropriate solution. In the current work, the thermal behaviour of engine and its effect on engine cooling mechanism is considered as part of the study to analyse the effect of applying CNG as prime fuel on a gasoline operated engine.