Abstract
The objective of this project was to investigate the wear of a spark-ignition engine when using 95% ethanol as asole fuel. The test engines were 4-stroke small gasoline engines (HONDA model GX16K1QT). The control study was performed using gasoline as a fuel without engine modification. However, in the engine wear study using ethanol, engine modifications were made i.e. changing a main jet size from No. 72 to No. 75 in the carburetor and altering an air choke to 25% of fully open. The engines were run at a speed of 3000 rpm with a half load of 1.2 kW. The running period was 450 hours. The method of evaluating engine wear was to measure the dimension of the engine components before and after the test. The results show that they were no significant difference in dimension of the two test engines main parts. Therefore, ethanol can be used as a substitute fuel for small engines with some engine modifications.
Keywords : engine wear, ethanol fuel
The objective of this project was to investigate the wear of a spark-ignition engine when using 95% ethanol as asole fuel. The test engines were 4-stroke small gasoline engines (HONDA model GX16K1QT). The control study was performed using gasoline as a fuel without engine modification. However, in the engine wear study using ethanol, engine modifications were made i.e. changing a main jet size from No. 72 to No. 75 in the carburetor and altering an air choke to 25% of fully open. The engines were run at a speed of 3000 rpm with a half load of 1.2 kW. The running period was 450 hours. The method of evaluating engine wear was to measure the dimension of the engine components before and after the test. The results show that they were no significant difference in dimension of the two test engines main parts. Therefore, ethanol can be used as a substitute fuel for small engines with some engine modifications.
Keywords : engine wear, ethanol fuel
