Fusel alcohol mixtures containing ethanol, isobutanol, isopentanol, and 2-phenyl ethanol have been shown to be a promising way to maximize carbon yield and utilize complex feedstocks and waste streams. The use of these fusel alcohol mixtures as a blending agent with gasoline has the potential to significantly lower the greenhouse gas emissions from the light duty fleet. Since the composition of the fusel alcohol mixtures is tunable, we developed a novel multi-objective optimization tool to identify optimal fusel alcohol blends that maximize efficiency gain and energy density simultaneously. This computational approach uses experimental data to predict the properties of fusel blends at various blending percentages with gasoline and validate the accuracy of these predictions. Pareto front analysis combined with a measure of total fuel economy gain led to the identification of predicted optimal fusel blends over varying volumetric blend percentages.  Fusel blends are demonstrated to provide comparable fuel economy gains to ethanol when blended with gasoline. The results were analyzed on the basis of the potential efficiency increase of blends by volume into a gasoline base fuel, and demonstrate that fusel blends have the opportunity to maximize efficiency gain while minimizing increases to blending vapor pressure and decreases to energy density. Specifically, optimized fusel blends are shown to achieve net MPG gains higher than ethanol, representing a significant potential for fusel blends in the marketplace. With the objective of implementing renewable fuel sources into gasoline, fusel blends can be used as a solution to further improve upon the overall performance of gasolines.

Multivariate optimization tool maximizes fuel economy of fusel alcohol blends in gasoline

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.