EMPIRICAL STUDIES OF C.I.

ENGINE FUELED WITH LOW

CARBON FUEL BLENDS USING ARTIFICIAL NEURAL
NETWORK

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the
degree of

M.Tech.

In

Thermal Power Engineering

By

ABHISHEK KUMAR VERMA

(211321002)

DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
TIRUCHIRAPPALLI-620015

DECEMBER 2022
 BONAFIDE CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the project titled EMPIRICAL STUDIES OF C.I. ENGINE FUELED
WITH LOW CARBON FUEL BLENDS USING ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORK
is a bonafide record of the work done by

ABHISHEK KUMAR VERMA (211321002)

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree of Master of Technology
in Thermal Power Engineering of the NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY,
TIRUCHIRAPPALLI, during the year 2022-2023.

Dr. S. VEDHARAJ Dr. K. PANNIRSELVAM

Project Guide Professor and Head
Assistant Professor Department of Mechanical Engineering
Department of Mechanical Engineering National Institute of Technology
National Institute of Technology Tiruchirappalli - 620015
Tiruchirappalli - 620015

Project Viva-voce held on _____________________________

Internal Examiner External Examiner

 ABSTRACT

The need for low carbon fuels increases as carbon dioxide emissions are directly
proportional to the number of carbon atoms in the molecular structure of the fuel. Ethanol is
considered as the optimum low carbon fuel due to its lower cost and better thermodynamic
properties compared with other alcohols. Binary blends of diesel and ethanol are still
insufficient to provide superior combustion and performance characteristics. The addition of
oxygenated fuels such as diethyl ether (DEE) and hydrogen peroxide in small amounts leads
to improved properties of the fuel. Addition of oleic acid provides the good homogeneity for
the diesel-ethanol blends. The fuel combinations of ternary and quaternary blends were
obtained from the diesel, ethanol, diethyl ether, and hydrogen peroxide fuels.

From the literature studies, the best proportion of the fuel and fuel blends were
considered in this study. Two ANN models were developed using TensorFlow and Scikit Learn
module in Python 3 software. A property predictor ANN model (model-1) predicts the physical
and chemical properties of the fuel blends by considering the proportion of individual fuel as
input. The final ANN model (model-2) was developed to predict the performance and emission
characteristics of fuel blends. The chemical properties of fuel blends and engine specifications
are considered as input variables. The experimental data of fuel properties, performance and
emission results from the previous studies were used to train the ANN model.

The correlation coefficient value for the model-1 and model-2 are 0.979 and 0.9654
respectively. According to ANN predictions, D60E30DEE5HP5 and D62.5E30DEE5HP2.5
show quite promising results with reduced NOx, CO, and UHC emissions and increased BTE.
Also, a ternary blend D60E30DEE10 achieves lower NOx, CO, and BSEC. The optimum
blends will be prepared and tested in the CI engine to determine the performance and emission
characteristics in the future work.

Keywords: Low carbon fuel, DEE, Hydrogen peroxide, Artificial Neural Network

i
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I profusely express my sincere gratitude to the almighty for having provided me the golden
opportunity to bring out this thesis completely successful. Sincere thanks are extended to my
guide Dr. S. VEDHARAJ who has brought his professionalism and expertise in guiding and
shaping the project at various levels.

I express my gratitude to Dr. K. PANNIRSELVAM, Head of the department, Mechanical

Engineering Department, National Institute of Technology Tiruchirappalli, for his support and
encouragement to this project.

I sincerely thank my project coordinators Dr. S. VENKATACHALAPATHY, Professor,

Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology (NIT),
Tiruchirappalli, Dr. M. SHAHUL HAMEED, Associate Professor, Department of
Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology (NIT), Tiruchirappalli, Dr. P.
KAUSHIK, Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of
Technology (NIT), Tiruchirappalli, and Dr. G. RAJASEKARAN, Assistant Professor,
Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology (NIT),
Tiruchirappalli for their valuable suggestions during the project reviews.

I express my earnest gratitude to Mr. SATHISHKUMAR B and Mr. KALIL BASHA J,

Ph.D. scholars, for their sincere help during the project.

I wish to thank my parents for the moral support they provided to make this project a success.
I thank all the staff members and my friends who directly or indirectly helped me with the
successful completion of this project.

ABHISHEK KUMAR VERMA

(211321002)

ii
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

S. No Title Page No
1. ABSTRACT i

2. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii

3. TABLE OF CONTENTS iii

4. LIST OF TABLES iv

5. LIST OF FIGURES v

6. LIST OF SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS vii

7. CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

8. CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

9. CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 11

10. CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 20

11. CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK 33

12. REFERENCES 35

iii
 LIST OF TABLES

TABLE NO. TITLE PAGE NO

1.1 Comparison of Thermodynamic properties of Low 2

Carbon alcohols with Diesel

1.2 Comparison of Thermodynamic properties of Cetane 2

Improvers and Emulsifiers

2.1 Test Fuel Blends 10

4.1 Predicted Properties of fuel blends 29

iv
 LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE NO. TITLE PAGE NO

3.1 Working Principle of ANN 11

3.2 Feedforward Backpropagation 12
3.3 Linear Activation Function 13
3.4 Hyperbolic Tangent Activation Function 14
3.5 Sigmoid Activation Function 15
3.6 Comparison of Sigmoid function with its derivative 15
3.7 Rectified Linear Units Activation Function 16
3.8 Steps involved in Model Selection 17
3.9 Structure of Model-1 18
3.10 Structure of Model-2 19
2
4.1(a) Number of neurons v/s R plot for Model-1 20
2
4.1(b) Number of neurons v/s R plot for Model-2 20
4.2(a) Sigmoid-Linear combination for Model-1 21
4.2(b) Sigmoid-Sigmoid combination for Model-1 21
4.2(c) RELU-Linear combination for Model-1 22
4.2(d) RELU-Sigmoid combination for Model-1 22
4.2(e) Tanh-Linear combination for Model-1 23
4.2(f) Tanh-Sigmoid combination for Model-1 23
4.3(a) Sigmoid-Linear combination for Model-2 24
4.3(b) Sigmoid-Sigmoid combination for Model-2 24
4.3(c) RELU-Linear combination for Model-2 25
4.3(d) RELU-Sigmoid combination for Model-2 25
4.3(e) Tanh-Linear combination for Model-2 26
4.3(f) Tanh-Sigmoid combination for Model-2 26
4.4 Comparison Chart of Cetane number 27
4.5 Comparison Chart of Calorific Value 28
4.6 Comparison Chart of Density 28
4.7 Comparison Chart of Kinematic Viscosity 29
4.8 BTE v/s Load plot for Fuel blends and Diesel 29
4.9 BSEC v/s Load plot for Fuel blends and Diesel 30
4.10 CO emissions v/s Load plot for Fuel blends and Diesel 30

v
4.11 NOx emissions v/s Load plot for Fuel blends and Diesel 31
4.12 UHC emissions v/s Load plot for Fuel blends and Diesel 31
4.13 Smoke Opacity v/s Load plot for Fuel blends and Diesel 32

vi
 LIST OF SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS

EV Electric Vehicles
IC Internal Combustion

LCF Low carbon fuels

ANN Artificial Neural Network

DEE DEE

DME Dimethyl Ether

CN Cetane number

CV Calorific Value

BTE Brake Thermal Efficiency

MSE Mean Squared Error

BSFC Brake-Specific Fuel Consumption

BSEC Brake-Specific Energy Consumption

PPM Parts per Million

CO Carbon Monoxide

NOx Nitrous Oxides

UHC Unburnt Hydrocarbons

EGT Exhaust Gas Temperature

EGR Exhaust Gas Recirculation

HRR Heat Release Rate

HLB Hydrophilic-Lipophilic Balance
HSU Hartridge Smoke Unit
R2 Coefficient of correlation

vii
 CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

The reliance of humankind on fossil fuels has been one of the major challenges to be
solved in the 21st century. In order to tackle global warming and climate change, stricter
emission norms are put in place year by year, and many developed and developing countries
have already announced plans to phase out fossil fuel-fired IC engines by the end of the decade.
The transportation sector contributes to a major part of global emissions. An alternative to the
IC Engines is the newly developed Electric Vehicles, but this alternative also comes with its
demerits, such as increasing costs of Li-Ion batteries due to the global shortage of lithium in
the upcoming decade, lower transportation ranges, and high cost of recycling of lithium and
other precious metals used in EV’s. Since most of the transportation sector heavily relies on CI
engines, the world needs an alternative fuel for the time being to meet the changing emission
norms without compromising performance until the challenges to EV usage are solved
completely.

Low carbon fuels (LCF) offer a promising alternative to conventional diesel and
biodiesel fuels in reducing carbon dioxide emissions, as they are directly proportional to the
number of carbon atoms in the molecular structure of the fuel. Diesel fuels contain around 9-
16 carbon atoms, while biodiesels have (16-25) carbon atoms in their molecular structure. Fuels
with less than four carbon atoms in their structure are termed LCF, such as ethanol, methanol,
isopropanol, propanol, butanol, DEE, DME, etc. Among all LCFs, alcohols offer a viable
alternative to fossil fuels, but due to lower viscosity, energy content, and poor combustion
performance when compared to diesel, they are not suitable to be used alone in CI engines. So,
to create an optimum fuel, it is necessary to blend the LCF with diesel and decrease the diesel
content to such a limit that the same or even better performance, combustion, and emission
characteristics can be achieved. Also, using an oxygenated additive in the fuel increases the
oxygen content in the fuel leading to better combustion and hence reducing NOx and UHC
emissions.

In the present work, ethanol is selected as the primary LCF based on certain factors viz,
lower cost, easy availability, and higher blending ratio among other low carbon alcohols, as
can be seen from Tables 1.1 and 1.2. Also, to improve combustion performance, two cetane

1
improvers viz, DEE and hydrogen peroxide, both of which have very high cetane numbers
(greater than 125) and comparable CV with diesel, have been selected to be added in small
variable amounts. Furthermore, to increase the blending ratio and stability of all these fuels
with diesel without any phase separation, oleic acid is selected as the suitable emulsifier, but
its content is fixed at 1%. The properties of additives are specified in Table 1.3

Table 1.1 Comparison of Thermodynamic Properties of Low carbon alcohols with

Diesel

Property Diesel Methanol Ethanol Propanol Isopropanol Butanol

Boiling point (°C) 180-360 64.7 78.3 98 82.5 117.7
Liquid density (kg/m3; at 837 792 789.45 805.3 787 811
20°C)
Lower Calorific Value 43 19.9 26.8 30.63 30.4 34.322
(MJ/kg)
Cetane number 45-55 <5 5-8 12 13 18
Autoignition Temperature 210 470 363 371 399 345
(°C)
Kinematic Viscosity (cSt; at 3.30 0.686 1.36 2.44 2.92 2.2
20°C)
Flash Point (°C) 65-88 11 14 22 11.67 38

Table 1.2 Thermodynamic Properties of Cetane Improvers and Emulsifier

Property Hydrogen Diethyl Oleic

peroxide Ether Acid
Boiling point (°C) 155.5 34.6 360
Liquid density (kg/m3; at 20°C) 1442 715 898
Lower Calorific Value (MJ/kg) 33.90 33.90 38.66
Cetane number >125 >125 57.1
Autoignition Temperature (°C) 160 164 365
Kinematic Viscosity (cSt; at 20°C) 0.8633 0.24 19.92
Flash Point (°C) 107 -38 188

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 To test on a large number of fuel blends comprised of ternary and quaternary blends of
these four fuels, two different ANN models are developed to save the cost and effort required
for testing. The 1st ANN model is named as Property predictor model, which takes the
individual concentrations of the four fuels and emulsifier as input and predicts the property of
the created blends with high accuracy. The 2nd ANN model takes the chemical properties and
engine specifications as input variables and predicts the performance and emission
characteristics which include BTE, BSEC, CO, NOx, UHC, and smoke opacity. Both models
have been trained using the datasets collected from the previous research works of various
authors doing similar experimental research for binary or ternary fuel blends.

After deploying both these models on seven blends selected after researching numerous
literatures, the most optimum fuel blends based on the performance and emission results can
be selected for which experimental testing can be performed, and ANN results can be validated
in the future, thus saving the cost of testing and experimentation on a large number of blends
and identifying the most optimum low carbon fuel blend which can replace diesel in the near
future.

3
 CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW

The properties of diesel-ethanol, diesel-ethanol-DEE, and diesel-ethanol-hydrogen

peroxide blends have been studied from the following research articles. Also, various methods,
algorithms, activation functions, and model selection criteria suitable for ANN prediction of
diesel engine characteristics have been reviewed.

Shiva Kumar Reddy Devasani et al. [1] reviewed the works of many authors who
experimentally analyzed the effects of blending different biodiesels and alcohols with diesel to
create ternary and quaternary biodiesel blends to create an alternative fuel that could replace
conventional diesel and found that adding ethanol with biodiesel to make ternary blends
demonstrated very efficient combustion. Furthermore, he learned that adding alcohol to
biodiesel-diesel blends improves the cold flow properties of the fuel blends, and the maximum
content of alcohols and biodiesel in diesel was limited to 10% and 20%, respectively, before
undergoing phase separation without the use of any surfactant

Lü Xingcai et al. [2] experimented on several diesel-ethanol binary blends, including a 1.5%
solubilizer added to all the blends with different proportions of diesel and ethanol on a single-
cylinder DI engine with any modifications and concluded that BTE for 10% and 15% ethanol
blends increased by 1% and 2.3%, respectively while BSFC increased for all the blends when
compared to diesel fuel. Along with this, they also measured the effect of adding 0.2% cetane
improver to the E-15 blend and found that all except UHC emissions were lowered by the
addition of ethanol to diesel, but the addition of cetane improver further increased the UHC
emissions of E15 blend but lowered NOx and CO emissions significantly.

Eloisa Torres-Jimenez et al. [3] experimentally conducted several physio-chemical tests on

three different diesel-ethanol blends with ethanol content ranging from 5-15% and pure diesel,
namely E5D95, E10D90, E15D85, and D100. He found that to use higher contents of ethanol
in diesel, certain additives are necessary to increase the stability and keep the flash point
temperature in the range of D100. Also, the cold flow properties are negatively impacted by
the increase in ethanol addition to diesel, while all other properties show good results compared
to pure diesel.

4
De-gang Li et al. [4] experimentally conducted the performance and emission tests on pure
diesel (D100) and ethanol-diesel blends with ethanol content of 5% (E5-D), 10% (E10-D),
15%(E15-D), and 20%(E20-D) at equal rated power for all the test fuels and found that due to
increase in ethanol content both BSFC and BTE increases, NOx, CO, and smoke emissions
decreased while UHC emissions increased for all the blends when compared with D100.
Furthermore, smoke opacity was significantly lower than D100 for E10-D and E15-D blends.

In 1997 Brent Bailey et al. [5] investigated the potential of DEE as an alternative fuel, either
purely or as a mixture with Ethanol in a review. They found that although DEE alone has much
higher energy content and very high Cetane number, i.e.,>125, than ethanol, higher blending
ratios of DEE, such as a blend of 50% DEE and 50% ethanol, only managed to obtain a cetane
number of just above 60 which was similar to those with much lesser contents of DEE such as
cetane number of 51.8 for a blend of 25% DEE and 75% ethanol. This demonstrated that using
higher quantities of DEE in the blends is not justified considering the high cost and lower
viscosity of DEE.

Abhishek Paul et al. [6] experimented on various. binary and ternary combinations of diesel-
ethanol-DEE blends with ethanol and DEE content ranging from 0-10 % and found that the
BTE of D95DEE5 was higher than diesel, unlike D90DEE10, where it was lower. But after
ethanol addition to both binary blends, the BTE came out to be higher than diesel. Ethanol also
improved the NOx, CO, UHC, and PM emissions for all DEE blends. D80DEE10E10 exhibited
the most optimum results having high performance and lower emissions.

Harish Venu and Venkataramanan Madhavan [7] experimented by adding DEE in different
ethanol-biodiesel-diesel (EBD) and methanol-biodiesel-diesel (MBD) Blends and tested the
blends on a single-cylinder DI engine at varying loads and found that introduction of DEE to
EBD blends showed higher BSFC, lower ignition delay and hence the duration of combustion
with higher emissions in HC, CO, and CO2 and lower NOx, PM and smoke emissions when
compared to diesel fuel. Overall, Both MBD and EBD blends with 5% DEE were the most
optimum as they had better performance and lower emissions than diesel.

Márcio A.S. de Carvalho et al. [8] conducted experiments on six test fuels, namely pure diesel
(D100), B20 (20% soybean biodiesel + 80% diesel), B20-E(90% B20+ 10% ethanol) and a
mixture of B20E with 5% DEE on a four-cylinder inline DI engine and found that although the
addition of ethanol and DEE had not shown any significant effect on performance and

5
emissions still B20E and B20D-DEE showed had lower PM and NOx emissions than both
D100 and B20. and B20-E had highest BTE at higher loads among all test fuels.

Murat Kadir Yesilyurt and Mustafa Aydin [9] investigated the effect of adding DEE from
0-10% in increments of 2.5% to B20(20% Cottonseed oil biodiesel+ 80% diesel) to create four
ternary blends, B20 and D100 as test fuels and tested them on single cylinder DI engine and
found that for 10% DEE addition to B20, BTE decreased and BSFC increased, but all other
emissions excluding CO emissions decreased to a large extent.

Bukke Devaraj Naik et al. [10] investigated the effect of adding DEE to Waste cooking
sunflower oil (WCSO) biodiesel-diesel blends and found that although DEE addition to WCSO
biodiesel-diesel Blends (B20) lowered viscosity, cetane number increased, leading to lower
ignition delay and shorter combustion. Overall, 10% DEE exhibited the most optimum results
in terms of performance and emissions for WCSO biodiesel-diesel blends. 15% DEE addition
to WCSO blends had very poor combustion characteristics. Also, NOx and smoke emissions
decreased while UHC and CO emissions increased with an increment in DEE content, but at
full loads, all three CO, NOx, and smoke emissions decreased for the DEE10 blend with B20.
For predicting the effects of DEE addition to other ratios of WCSO biodiesel, such as B40, and
B60, they designed an ANN model using NNToolbox in MATLAB and found 10% DEE as
the optimum concentration for B40 and B60.

M.P. Ashok and C.G. Saravanan [11] investigated the effect of adding 12% hydrogen
peroxide to an emulsified fuel mixture of 50% diesel and 50% ethanol. The emulsifier used
was Span-80 due to its high HLB of 4.3. After testing on all three test fuels, namely D100,
50D/50E, and a mixture of 50D/50E with 12% H2O2, they found very promising results as the
blend of H2O2 with emulsified fuel had higher BTE, lower BSFC, lower smoke opacity, NOx,
UHC, PM and CO emissions than both D100 and 50D/50E.

Zainal Abidin Mohd Yusof et al. [12] thermally evaluated several diesel-H2O2 blends with a
Polysaccharide polymer (PSP) and the acetone mixture in a ratio of 1:4, acting as an emulsifier.
They found that as H2O2 concentration increases in the blends, the cetane number rises sharply,
but the maximum concentration of H2O2 was limited to 15% in the blends as after that, the
problem of phase separation occurred too quickly. Also, due to H2O2 addition to diesel, its
thermal conductivity and specific heat significantly increased with small decrements in
calorific value but well within the range of pure diesel.

6
Muhammad Saad Khan et al. [13] conducted physiochemical and FTIR (Fourier Transform
Infrared Spectroscopy) studies for diesel-H2O2 binary blends prepared using a 5% PSP
emulsifier and varying the H2O2 content from 5-15%. They found that using a PSP emulsifier
reduced interfacial surface tension between the two fuels, which ultimately increased the
stability of the blends. Results indicated that due to H2O2 acting as an oxygenated additive, the
physical and chemical properties of resulting blends were well within the acceptable ranges for
diesel fuels according to ASTM D-975 test standards. Also, the combustion efficiency
increased due to the presence of extra oxygen in the fuel as the H2O2 content increased.

K.A. Subramanian and A. Ramesh [14] investigated the effects of adding 5% H2O2 to water-
diesel emulsified fuels with water to diesel ratio kept at 0.4:1. For creating the emulsified fuel,
they used a surfactant with HLB of 7 with its content kept at 1% for the fuel. Tests on all three
fuels, namely diesel, W/D:0.4, and W/D:0.4 + H2O2/D:0.05, indicated promising results for the
ternary emulsified fuel blend with BTE reaching 33.5% as compared to 32.6% for neat water-
diesel emulsion. Also, CO and HC emissions decreased at all loads, and smoke and NOx also
decreased while ignition delay, peak HRR, and peak pressure decreased compared to the neat
water-diesel emulsion.

H.E. Saleh [15] investigated the effect of adding H2O2 to the ternary blends of diesel-jojoba
Oil-butanol on performance and emission characteristics of the ternary and quaternary blends
and found that the most optimum ternary fuel blend was 87% diesel-5% jojoba Oil-8% butanol
(DJ5B8) as it exhibited lower BSFC, EGT, higher BTE, lower CO and UHC emissions with
the only demerit of having higher NOx emissions among all blends and diesel. After that, he
added 0-20 % of H2O2 to the ternary blends in increments of 5% to create four different
quaternary blends and concluded that 5% H2O2 addition is the most optimum content for
DJ5B8 in terms of both performance and emissions.

Samet Uslu and Mustafa Bahattin Celik [16] designed an ANN model using NNToolbox in
MATLAB to predict the performance and emission characteristics of diesel-DEE blends.
Initially, they performed experimentation on the blends at different engine loads and speeds
and noted down the output values of BSFC, BTE, NOx, CO, UHC, and smoke emissions and
then divided the experimental data as 75% for training the model and 25% for testing the model.
After that, they trained the model and predicted the values of output variables for the test
dataset. Comparing the predicted values and the original experimental outputs of the test
dataset, the coefficient of correlation (R2) value came out to be around 0.9878, thus verifying

7
the experimental results with the model predictions, and hence they concluded that ANN could
be used for predicting the engine characteristics with high accuracy.

Anh Tuan Hoang et al. [17] reviewed the work of various researchers who applied different
types of ANN algorithms and activation functions to estimate the performance and emission
characteristics of different variants of a biodiesel-diesel blend-fueled CI engine. They found
that most of the predictions made by the feed-forward backpropagation training algorithm were
around 95% accurate and concluded that different variants of the backpropagation training
algorithm could be used to predict the engine characteristics accurately.

Bahattin Işcan [18] analyzed the experimental results of combustion indicators such as HRR,
EGT, Mass of fuel fraction burned (MFC), Cumulative heat release (CHC), and Velocity of
heat transfer (VHT) for a 4-cylinder DI engine fueled with Safflower oil biodiesel-ultra low
sulphur diesel fuel blends and then developed an ANN model using NNToolbox in MATLAB.
He used the feedforward backpropagation Levenberg Marquardt training algorithm with two
hidden layers and one output layer, including ten neurons in the 1st hidden layer, six neurons
in the 2nd hidden layer, and finally, four neurons in the output layer. The adaptation function
used was gradient descent with momentum weight and bias learning, and the loss function used
was MSE. He then split the total experimental data for training, testing, and validation datasets
and found the accuracy of fit to be around 99.93 % for all three datasets.

Seunghyup Shin et al. [19] designed a deep learning dataset with 12 input variables and one
output, i.e., NOx, to predict the transient NOx emissions using the variations made in steady-
state data available from prior research with TensorFlow in Python 3 and then verified the
results with experimentation on a 4-cylinder CI engine coupled with an AC dynamometer to
calculate steady state and transient NOx emissions and finally proposed a methodology to
estimate transient NOx emissions using deep learning.

Krishnamoorthy Ramalingam et al. [20] experimented with a combination of low-viscosity

biodiesels, i.e., Citronella and Cymbopogon Flexuous biodiesels in a fixed ratio of 1:1,
designated it as their test biodiesel and mixed it with diesel in varying ratios to create a range
of biodiesel blends from B20 to B100 named according to the biodiesel content. In carrying
out the experiments, they measured the performance and emission characteristics and then
designed an ANN model using NNToolbox in MATLAB to predict the characteristics for any
type of blend with given biodiesels and diesels. The Model’s R2 value ranged from 0.9076 to

8
0.9950, indicating a good fit, and finally, the B20 blend was found to be the most optimum one
among all the blends predicted by ANN and using experimentation.

T.F. Yusaf et al. [21] experimented on diesel and three different blends of Crude palm oil
(CPO) and diesel at variable speeds and under fixed throttle valve opening. By
experimentation, he found that the blends possessed higher BSFC and CO emissions but lower
NOx emissions. After experimentation, the results of performance and emission data were used
to train an ANN model which had blend concentration and engine speed as inputs and gave
EGT, BSFC, BP, NOx, CO, and O2 emissions as output by selecting the proper activation
functions, i.e., Logic for hidden layer and Linear for output layer with a total of 40 samples
used for the model out of which 32 were used for training (80%) and 8 were used for testing
(20%). The model achieved the R2 values of 0.96 for BP, 0.83 for BSFC, 0.9332 for NOx,
0.9396 for CO, 0.9367 for O2, and 0.9152 for EGT despite having a smaller number of datasets.

2.1 INFERENCE
Following the review of many works of literature, the most optimum blends to be
selected include the ternary blends of diesel-ethanol-DEE and diesel-ethanol-hydrogen
peroxide. Also, for the hydrogen peroxide blends and to obtain solubility of ethanol in higher
proportions (~30%), a suitable low-cost emulsifier should be used in low amounts, i.e., up to 5
%. oleic acid is best suited for this purpose due to its higher stability for the blends.

Levenberg-Marquardt backpropagation training algorithm and Adam optimizer with

slow learning rate is best suited for the ANN model. The optimum number of hidden layers is
two based on the previous works of researchers solving similar prediction problems. The best
activation functions for the hidden layers and output layers are:

For hidden layers:

• Rectified Linear (RELU)

• Hyperbolic Tangent (Tanh)
• Sigmoid

For the output layer:

• Linear
• Sigmoid

9
Based on the literature review, the fuels and proportion ranges are selected as follows:

• Diesel: (60-70) %

• Ethanol: 30 %

• DEE: (0-10) %

• Hydrogen peroxide: (0-5) %

Seven blends have been selected based on the above-mentioned proportion.

Table 2.1 Test fuel blends

Blend Name % Diesel % Ethanol % DEE %H2O2
D70E30 70 30 0 0
D65E30DEE5 65 30 5 0
D60E30DEE10 60 30 10 0
D62.5E30DEE5HP2.5 62.5 30 5 2.5
D60E30DEE5HP5 60 30 5 5
D57.5E30DEE10HP2.5 57.5 30 10 2.5
D55E30DEE10HP5 55 30 10 5

These seven blends include one binary blend of diesel and ethanol, two ternary blends
of diesel, ethanol and DEE, and four quaternary blends of diesel, ethanol, DEE, and hydrogen
peroxide. Ramkumar Shanmugam et al. [22] reported that oleic acid with 1% of concentration
can be used as an emulsifier to improve the solubility of diesel-ethanol blend with DEE.

2.2 OBJECTIVES

The following objective were prepared based on the literature studies.

• To select the optimum fuel blends based on the literature survey.

• To predict the physical and chemical properties of the fuel blends by developing
different ANN models.
• To predict the performance and emission characteristics of the proposed ternary and
quaternary blends using ANN model.

10
 CHAPTER 3
METHODOLOGY

3.1 WORKING PRINCIPLE OF ANN

Fig. 3.1 Working principle of ANN

Fig. 3.1 depicts the basic model of ANN. Any ANN model has three types of layers,
viz. input Layer, hidden Layer, and output Layer. The number of inputs and outputs required
from the network decides the number of neurons in the input and output layers. But the model
can have any number of hidden layers with different numbers of neurons in each layer. As can
be seen from Fig. 3.1, inputs from all the nodes in the input layer are considered to calculate
the value of output at the next node, and this is done with the aid of the feedforward
backpropagation training algorithm.

3.1.1 FEEDFORWARD BACKPROPAGATION ALGORITHM

The feedforward backpropagation algorithm sits at the heart of the neural network. It is
divided into two steps: Forward feed and Back-Propagation

3.1.1.1 FORWARD PROPAGATION

An input layer, one or more hidden layers, and a single output layer make up the
fundamental components of a neural network. During forward feed, the network's weights are
initialized at random. At each node of the hidden layer, the input features are multiplied by the

11
relevant weights, and a bias is then applied to the net sum at each node. The output of the node
is then created from this value using an activation function (ƒ).

= ƒ [𝑏 + ∑(𝑤𝑖 ∗ 𝑥𝑖 )]
𝑖=1

Fig. 3.2 Feedforward backpropagation

In the case of multiple hidden layers, the output of the next layer nodes will be predicted
by the transformed sum of weighted inputs plus the bias of previous layer nodes. The
transformation entirely depends on the type of activation function specified for the layer.
3.1.1.2 BACKPROPAGATION

The loss function (C) shows how effectively the network predicts the output as it
produces it. Loss functions are of many types, such as MSE, MAPE, etc. To reduce loss, the
network uses backpropagation. By changing the weights and biases of the neural network, a
backpropagation approach reduces the loss function. With respect to each network weight, the
gradient of the loss function is computed using this manner.
Let us suppose that the loss function is MSE, the predicted output is ŷ, and the actual
output that the model already knows is y for the training dataset. Then the MSE will be given
by
𝑁
1
𝐶(𝑤1 , 𝑤2 , … 𝑤𝑛 ) = ∑(ŷ − 𝑦)2
𝑁
𝑖=1

Now, the gradient of this loss function C is taken with respect to the weights, and the new
weights are calculated from the old weights in a manner that minimises the loss function

𝜕𝐶
𝑤 𝑘+1 = 𝑤 𝑘 − 𝛼 ∗ ( )
𝜕𝑤

12
where 𝑤 𝑘 is the value of old weight at any one of the nodes of a layer, 𝑤 𝑘+1 is the updated
weight at that node, α is known as the learning rate, and it decides the speed of convergence of
the model. This method is known as the gradient descent method and is used to update the
weights of the neural network. In this way, using backpropagation, the weights are adjusted,
and the loss function is minimised over several iterations or epochs until the solution converges
and high value of correlation, R2 is obtained.

3.1.2 TYPES OF ACTIVATION FUNCTIONS

Activation functions or Transfer functions are used to map the outputs from the nodes to
values between 0 and 1 or -1 to 1, based on the type. This basically imparts a decision-making
logic to the neural network. Activation functions are divided into two categories which are:

• Linear
• Non-Linear

3.1.2.1 LINEAR ACTIVATION FUNCTION

The linear activation function is the most basic type of activation function, also called
as Identity activation function, as it is the equation of a line, so its output ranges from (−∞, ∞).
So, it can not be used to train a complex model. However, it is best suited for the output layer

ƒ(𝑥) = 𝑥

Fig. 3.3 Linear activation Function

13
3.1.2.2 NON-LINEAR ACTIVATION FUNCTION

Non-linear activation functions are used to introduce the complexity to a model so that
the model can better understand the problem. Some important activation functions used for a
regression problem are described below.

3.1.2.2.1 HYPERBOLIC TANGENT FUNCTION

The hyperbolic tangent function (tanh) is used to map the values between -1 and 1 and
is widely used for regression and classification problems. As tanh is an increasing function, its
advantage is that negative inputs are mapped near -1, very small inputs are mapped near 0, and
large inputs are mapped near 1. Due to this feature, it works well for classification Problems.

𝑒 𝑥 −𝑒 −𝑥
ƒ(𝑥) = tanh(x) = 𝑥
𝑒 + 𝑒 −𝑥

Fig. 4.4 Hyperbolic tangent activation function

3.1.2.2.2 SIGMOID OR LOGISTIC FUNCTION

The sigmoid function gets its names from the shape of its curve. Like tanh it also has
the shape of S, but it maps the values it receives between 0 and 1, and hence it is best suited
for problems where one needs predict the probability as an output.

1
ƒ(𝑥) =
1 + 𝑒 −𝑥

14
 Fig. 3.5 Sigmoid activation function
However, there is a problem associated with the sigmoid function called the Vanishing
gradient problem. Sigmoid function squeezes a huge input space between 0 and 1 into a small
input space. As a result, the output of the sigmoid function will change little when the input
changes significantly. The derivative shrinks as a result. This isn't a major issue for shallow
networks that only have a few layers that use these activations. However, using more layers
may result in a gradient that is too narrow for training to be successful. Numerous small
derivatives are multiplied together when many hidden layers use an activation like the sigmoid
function. As one propagates down to the bottom layers, the gradient so drops off exponentially.
The initial layers' weights and biases won't be adequately updated with each training session if
the gradient is too tiny. It can result in overall network inaccuracy because these early layers
are frequently essential for identifying the fundamental components of the input data.

Fig. 3.6 Comparison of sigmoid function and its derivative

15
This problem is avoided by using another and the most popular activation function, which is
termed RELU.

3.1.2.2.2 RECTIFIED LINEAR UNIT ACTIVATION FUNCTION

This function has mostly replaced the sigmoid function in most regression problems
since it simply avoids the vanishing gradient problem suffered by other activation functions.
When x is less than zero, f(x) equals zero, and when x is more than or equal to zero, f(x) equals
x.

The drawback is that any negative values instantly become zero, which reduces the
model's capacity to effectively fit or train from the data. That means any negative input to the
RELU activation function immediately becomes zero in the graph, which damages the final
graph by improperly mapping the negative values.

0 ;𝑥 < 0
ƒ(𝑥) = {
𝑥 ;𝑥 ≥ 0

Fig. 3.7 Rectified Linear activation function

3.2 MODEL SELECTION PROCEDURE

The theory behind ANN has been reviewed and it can be applied to the problem at hand.
Since there are two models, the same criteria are adopted for both to select various parameters
by testing model accuracy on the test data with each parameter and comparing to get the most
optimum parameters for both models.

16
 The 1st parameter is the number of hidden layers and the selection of optimum
hyperparameters, and it is selected as two based on the studies done by Bahattin Işcan [18] and
Seunghyup Shin et al. [19] since too much complexity is not needed in these models. Adam
optimizer has been selected with the hyperparameters β1 as β2 called exponential decay rates as
0.99 and 0.9999 respectively. The model constant ϵ is taken as 10-7. The Loss function is
selected as MAPE, number of steps per epoch is taken as 7 and the Learning rate (α) is taken
to be 0.0001 similar to the study done for less number of datasets by T. Yusaf et al. [21]. The
2nd parameter is finding the optimum number of neurons in each hidden layer and the final
parameter is selection of activation function to be used in each layer. After selecting these three
parameters, we run the model on test dataset for 1000 epochs. These parameters have been
selected as in the process indicated in the given flow chart.

FIX THE LOSS FUNCTION, OPTIMIZER, LEARNING RATE (α), NUMBER OF

HIDDEN LAYERS, NUMBER OF EPOCHS PER STEP

RUN A PROGRAM TO LOOP THE NUMBER OF NEURONS FROM 1 TO 50 FOR

EACH HIDDEN LAYER AND FIND THE R2 VALUE FOR EACH COMBINATION
OUT OF 2500 POSSIBLE FOR 100 EPOCHS

AFTER FIXING THE NUMBER OF NEURONS IN EACH LAYER, SELECT THE

DIFFERENT COMBINATION OF ACTIVATION FUNCTIONS FOR HIDDEN
LAYER AND OUTPUT LAYER AND FIND THE R2 VALUE FOR EACH TYPE
FOR 100 EPOCHS

MOST OPTIMUM MODEL

Fig. 3.8 Steps involved in model selection

17
3.2.1. SELECTION OF THE NUMBER OF NEURONS
The optimum number of neurons in the model is selected by running a loop to vary the
neurons in both the hidden layers, each loop running for 100 iterations and calculating R2 value
for each combination. Thus, a total of 2500 such combinations are obtained, and the
combination with the highest R2 value is chosen.

3.2.2. SELECTION OF ACTIVATION FUNCTIONS

Based on the literature review, the activation functions suited well for the hidden layers
are sigmoid, hyperbolic tangent, and RELU, while those for the output layer are sigmoid and
linear. In this way, six different combinations of activation functions for each model are applied
and by the means of a python program, the model fit obtained between the predictions and
actual values for the test dataset including R2 is displayed. By comparing these values for each
activation function combination, the most optimum one can be selected.

3.3 STRUCTURE OF ANN MODELS

As discussed earlier, two models have been designed, the 1st of which predicts the
properties of fuel blend based on individual fuel concentrations and the 2nd predicts the
performance and emission characteristics of fuel blends based on the properties and engine
specifications.

Fig. 3.9 Structure of model-1

Fig. 3.9 shows the structure of the model-1. The model-1 consists of 5 inputs which are
fuel concentrations and 4 outputs viz. LCV, CN, kinematic viscosity, and density of fuel blends.

For 2nd model, there are sixteen inputs which are divided into three categories: fuel
concentration, fuel blend properties, and engine specifications, while six outputs are obtained

18
which can be divided into two categories: performance characteristics which include BTE and
BSFC, and emission characteristics which include CO, NOx, UHC and smoke emissions.

Fig. 3.10 Structure of model-2

After building the models, the total dataset collected for training 1st model, i.e., the
property predictor model, is divided into training and testing datasets by the train_test_split
function of scikit learn, and the ratio for training and testing datasets is kept as 80:20 for both
the models. Out of this 80% of training data, 10% is kept for validation during the training
process. Since the actual target or output values for 20% of test data are already known, thus
after training the model on 80% of training data, it can be deployed to predict the output values
for 20% of test data, and the predicted output is compared with the actual output to get the
accuracy of the model on the test data. If the accuracy is high enough, i.e., greater than 95%,
then the model is deployed to predict the properties of the fuel blends for the 2nd model since
the 2nd model needs the blend properties as an input.

After model-1 predicts the four properties with good enough accuracy, those properties
are fed as inputs to the 2nd model along with engine data. After the 2nd model is also trained
with high enough accuracy, it can be used to predict the performance and emission
characteristics of any type of binary, ternary or quaternary fuel blend on any unmodified CI
engine.

19
 CHAPTER 4
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

4.1 OPTIMUM NUMBER OF NEURONS

After, training both the models with 2 hidden layers and varying the number of neurons
in those hidden layers from 2 to 50 using RELU-linear combination for each layer based on the
methodology depicted in the works of Anh Tuan Hoang et al. [17], the 3D plots are obtained
as shown in Fig. 4.1(a) and 4.1(b). It was found that the optimum number of neurons are 43
(first hidden layer), 47 (second hidden layer) for model-1 and 46 (first hidden layer), 44 (second
hidden layer), for model-2 with maximum R2 values of 0.979 and 0.9654 respectively.

Fig. 4.1(a) Number of neurons v/s R2 plot for Model-1

Fig. 4.1(b) Number of neurons v/s R2 plot for Model-2

20
4.2 OPTIMUM ACTIVATION FUNCTIONS FOR MODEL 1

The results of different possible combinations of activation functions used for model-1
are plotted in Fig 4.2(a) to Fig. 4.2(f). From the plots, it can be inferred that the maximum value
of R2 for all the output properties of model-1 was maximum for RELU-linear combination. So,
this combination is selected as the optimum combination of activation function for model-1.

Fig. 4.2(a) Sigmoid-Linear combination for model-1

Fig. 4.2(b) Sigmoid-Sigmoid combination for model-1

21
Fig. 4.2(c) RELU-Linear combination for model-1

Fig. 4.2(d) RELU-Sigmoid combination for model-1

22
Fig. 4.2(e) Tanh-Linear combination for model-1

Fig. 4.2(f) Tanh-Sigmoid combination for model-1

23
4.3 OPTIMUM ACTIVATION FUNCTIONS FOR MODEL 2

From Fig. 4.3(a) to Fig. 4.3(f), the different combination of activation functions were
shown for the model-2. Samet Uslu et al. [16] predicted the performance and emission
characteristics of CI engine using a similar methodology.

Fig. 4.3(a) Sigmoid-Linear combination for model-2

Fig. 4.3(b) Sigmoid-Sigmoid combination for model-2

24
Fig. 4.3(c) RELU-Linear combination for model-2

Fig. 4.3(d) RELU-Sigmoid combination for model-2

25
 Fig. 4.3(e) Tanh-Linear combination for model-2

Fig. 4.3(f) Tanh-Sigmoid combination for model-2

Here also, the RELU-linear combination provides the best fit for the model. Thus, the activation
function for the hidden layers was selected as RELU, while that for the output was selected as
linear.

26
4.4 PROPERTY PREDICTIONS

Fig. 4.4 shows the comparison between the predicted values of the cetane number of
test fuel blends with diesel. As can be seen, the diesel fuels have comparable cetane number
with the ternary blend D65E30DEE5, but it is higher for D60E30DEE10. The quaternary
blends are all having much greater CN than diesel except D62.5E30DEE5HP2.5. It can be
concluded that the presence of H2O2 and DEE in maximum concentration increases the CN by
18.7% than diesel-ethanol blend and by 21.13% than diesel.

Fig. 4.4 Comparison chart of cetane number

By comparing the calorific values of the fuel blends from Fig. 5.5, it can be observed
that the diesel has highest CV than all other blends. It can be noted that the quaternary blends
with high CN have lower CV than others.

Fig. 4.5 Comparison chart of calorific value

27
 From Fig. 4.6, it can be noticed that although diesel has much higher density than other
blends, but all other blends have comparable densities except D60E30DEE10, which has the
lowest.

Fig. 4.6 Comparison chart of density

From Fig. 4.7, it can be observed that the quaternary blends with higher quantities of
DEE have the lowest viscosity. Pure diesel is having much higher viscosity than blends, but
the viscosity of two of the quaternary blends, D60E30DEE5HP5, D62.5E30DEE5HP5, and
one ternary blend, D65E30DEE5 is in the acceptable range for unmodified engine.

Fig. 4.7 Comparison chart of kinematic viscosity

28
 Table 4.1 Predicted properties of fuel blends
Blend Name CN LCV Density Viscosity
(MJ/Kg) (kg/m3) (cSt)
D70E30 25.3146 39.565 862.623 2.4584

D65E30DEE5 44.8423 38.467 831.714 2.0097

D60E30DEE10 50.5929 36.728 792.241 1.5857

D62.5E30DEE5HP2.5 46.7713 38.669 848.856 2.0322

D60E30DEE5HP5 50.8788 39.233 870.287 2.0514

D57.5E30DEE10HP2.5 53.5820 36.833 811.913 1.5421

D55E30DEE10HP5 62.2471 37.660 831.924 1.5100

4.5 PERFORMANCE CHARACTERISTICS

Fig. 4.8 shows the comparison between the predicted values of BTE (%) of test fuel
blends with diesel. It can be observed that the BTE increases for all the test fuels at higher
loads. Furthermore, the BTE of diesel dominates over all blends at lower loads and the BTE of
D70E30 becomes maximum as the load increases. All other blends have comparable BTE with
diesel and at full load conditions, the BTE of binary blend is higher than diesel by 2.7%.

Fig. 4.8 BTE v/s load plot for fuel blends and diesel
Fig. 4.9 shows the comparison between the predicted values of BSEC (MJ/KWhr) of
test fuel blends with diesel. Except D100 and D70E30 all other blends have decreasing trend

29
in BSEC as the load increases but the BSEC of diesel still lies much below the other blends at
most of the loading conditions. Also, the BSEC of D60E30DEE10 and D57.5E30DEE10HP2.5
is lower than diesel by 15.92% and 6.48% respectively at full load condition.

Fig. 4.9 BSEC v/s load plot for fuel blends and diesel

4.6 EMISSION CHARACTERISTICS

Fig. 4.10 shows that all the blends are having significantly lower CO emissions than
diesel. D62.5E30DEE5HP2.5 has 32.53% lesser CO emissions than diesel at full loads
condition due to the precense of oxygenated additive (DEE/H2O2) in the fuel.

Fig. 4.10 CO emissions v/s load plot for fuel blends and diesel

30
 From Fig. 4.11, it can be seen that the NOx emissions increases with increase in load
for all the test fuels. Also, all the blends have much lower NOx emissions than diesel at all
loads, while two blends D60E30DEE5HP5 and D62.5E30DEE5HP2.5 have 31% and 23%
lesser NOx than diesel at full load condition.

Fig. 4.11 NOx emissions v/s load plot for fuel blends and diesel
Fig. 4.12 describes the UHC emissions of test fuels against diesel at different loads. All
ternary and quaternary blends have similar behaviour at all loads when compared to diesel and
D70E30. The UHC emissions are minimum at 50% load for all ternary and quaternary blends.
At full load condition, only four blends have lower UHC emissions than diesel fuel and
D60E30DEE5HP5 having the lowest UHC emissions which was 13.67% less than diesel.

Fig. 4.12 UHC emissions v/s load plot for fuel blends and diesel

31
 Fig. 4.13 shows the comparison between the predicted values of smoke opacity (HSU)
of Test fuel blends with diesel. Diesel is having much higher smoke emissions than other blends
at all loads. The binary blend D70E30 has lowest smoke emissions at lower loads but it also
becomes 2nd highest emitter at full load condition.
Also, the most optimum blends based on smoke emissions are identified as
D60E30DEE5HP5 and D55E30DEE10HP5, both emitting almost 44.4% lesser smoke than
diesel and 36.6% lower than D70E30 at full loads. The results for performance and emissions
are in line with the works of Abhishek Paul et al. [6] and M.P. Ashok et al. [11]

Fig. 4.13 Smoke Opacity v/s load plot for fuel blends and diesel

32
 CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
5.1 CONCLUSIONS
In present study, the most optimum low-carbon fuel blends were selected and the fuel
properties, performance, emission characteristics were predicted using the ANN models. Two
ANN models were trained by the dataset collected from the previous studies. The proposed
low carbon fuel blends can be used as an alternative to diesel fuel in an unmodified CI engine.

The conclusions obtained from this study are

• The results obtained from both the ANN models have a high value of the coefficient of
correlation, which shows that these models fit the training data perfectly. The overall
R2 value for model-1 and model-2 are 0.979 and 0.9654 respectively.

• D60E30DEE10 and Diesel-ethanol-DEE-H2O2 quaternary blends exhibit comparable

values of calorific values and density with diesel blend and have higher values of cetane
number than diesel but their viscosity is quite lower.

• The BSEC of diesel is much lesser than the ternary and quaternary blends at higher
loads. Two of the blends namely D60E30DEE10 and D57.5E30DEE10HP2.5 have
lower BSEC than diesel.

• The BTE of diesel is comparable with the ternary and quaternary blends and the BTE
increases for all the blends at higher loads.

• CO emissions for all the fuel blends are significantly lesser than diesel and further
decrease at higher loads. The reason for this effect can be attributed to the precense of
oxygenated additive (DEE/H2O2) in the fuel.

• NOx emissions of ternary and quaternary blends are much lesser than diesel, and at
higher loads. Two of the blends, D60E30DEE5HP5 and D62.5E30DEE5HP2.5 have
considerably lesser NOx emissions than diesel at higher loads. The higher in-cylinder

33
 temperature in the case of the diesel fuel is the reason for the higher NOx emission for
diesel fuel.

• The UHC emissions for most of the blends are lesser than diesel. UHC emissions are
minimum at 50% of the load for all the blends. Two of the quaternary blends namely
D60E30DEE5HP5 and D62.5E30DEE5HP2.5 have the lowest UHC emissions among
all blends. The reason for this may be the excess oxygen which causes complete
combustion thus reducing UHC emissions.

• Smoke opacity of all the fuel blends is much lesser than diesel and smoke emissions
increase for all the fuels at higher loads.

• ANN models predicted properties and engine characteristics well with higher R2 values
and it has the capability to predict the engine characteristics by training the model with
fuel properties, fuel compositions and engine specifications data.

5.2 FUTURE WORK

ANN model has a potential to predict the engine characteristics for the different fuel
combination and concentration. ANN prediction eliminates the number of testing in the engine
and testing cost by predicting the fuel blends with good performance. Among the seven
proposed fuel blends, one ternary blend and two quaternary blends have been identified as an
optimum fuel blends with maximum performance and minimal emission characteristics. The
optimum blends will be prepared and tested in the CI engine to determine the performance and
emission characteristics in the future work.

34
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