Development of Emissions Reduction Tube for Diesel Engines

Abstract

Automobile industry have grown a lot since the last century and caused a serious issue of emission releases to the atmosphere regardless of how useful it is to human beings. Compression ignition diesel engines in particular will be the main focus of this project due to the huge smoke emissions that are caused by incomplete combustion of diesel fuel. An emissions reduction tube has been fabricated and installed at the exhaust of a single cylinder diesel engine that has a size of 230 cubic centimeters. Water and sodium hydroxide were used as absorbing mediums. The main effect was on engine's emissions which are HC, CO, CO2, NOx and smoke. Water has reduced hydrocarbon's emissions by almost 40% but didn't affect the CO2 emissions. Sodium hydroxide solution which is 50% saturated however has reduced carbon dioxides emissions almost by 90%. Moreover, NOx emissions were reduced for both water and NaOH experiments. Smoke emissions were reduced by 80% for both constant load and constant speed experiments. In conclusion, NaOH and water showed that it is very possible to reduce or even stop the harmful gasses from polluting the environment. An HC-CO2 reduction trade of relation has been found when using water and NaOH solution respectively, but in general with a little bit of optimization, all emissions could be reduced to an acceptable limit keeping the environment as safe as possibly can.