Experimental Investigation on Modified Catalytic Converter with Metal Oxide as Catalyst in SI Engine with Gasohol Fuel

Abstract

The growing demands for improving air quality, the increased cost of crude oil, and its critical level of availability move the automobile industries in search of alternative fuels. The past and current civilizations are making the earth a vulnerable place to live for future generations by polluting and extinguishing all natural resources. The increase in industrialization and motorization have made the situation still worse. To improve the air quality, cope up with emerging demand, and reduce the cost of fuel the whole world is moving towards alternative fuels. In this research, alcohol is considered an alternative fuel since alcohols are oxygenated fuels and having lesser carbon content. Hence there is a considerable amount of reduction in regulated emissions (HC, CO2, CO, and NOx). Alcohols are renewable and preparation process is simple. The usage of alcohol will lead to unregulated emissions like aldehydes, alkanes, etc. In this research, in order to reduce both regulated and unregulated emissions, a novel shaped catalytic converter is designed and fabricated using advanced manufacturing process. In this, the conventional catalyst like platinum, palladium, and rhodium catalysts are replaced with vanadium and cobalt to reduce the cost and the use of costlier earth metals. The analyses were conducted on a SI engine setup utilizing gasohol (gas + ethanol) fuel blends in with three distinctive fuel proportions such as E10 (gasoline 90% ethanol 10%) and 20% (gasoline 80% ethanol 20%) and with 100% gasoline E0. Both regulated and unregulated emissions was measured and conversion efficiency of the newly manufactured novel catalytic converter was also determined.