Alcohol can be obtained from nature and it can manufacture very easily so alcohol as a fuel is very attractive. It is one of the liquid fuel alternatives of gasoline used in a combustion engine. There are different types of alcohol but some main types are methanol, ethanol, propanol, and butanol. Let us have a deep insight into the advantages of alcohol used as a fuel.
Advantages of alcohol as a fuel :
- No problem of availability can be obtained from a number of sources.
- Reduce dependent on fossil fuel.
- It is a high octane number with anti-knock index numbers of over 100.
- Alcohols have a higher flame speed.
- It produces less overall emissions compared to gasoline.
- When alcohol is burned, it forms more moles of exhaust gases, which gives higher pressure and more power in the expansion stroke.
- It gives a cooler intake process because it has a high latent heat of vaporization.
- Volumetric efficiency is high.
- Alcohol is ultraclean and has low sulpher content in the fuel.
- Alcohol contains oxygen thus it requires less amount of air for stoichiometric combustion.
- Alcohol possesses high latent heat of vaporization thus low intake temperature and increases volumetric efficiency.
- It can run efficiently by a high compression ratio.