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Bul. Inst. Polit. Iaşi, t. LVIII (LXII), f. 4, 2012 137<br />

This is in agreement with the theoretical expectation that the<br />

decomposition of the larger hydrocarbon molecules from diesel fuel during<br />

chemical reaction should create higher entropy increase than the decomposition<br />

of a lighter methane molecule. The decrease of combustion irreversibility is<br />

even higher for the case of oxygenated fuel.<br />

An “second-law efficiency”<br />

can be defined as the ratio of<br />

extracted work over injected fuel<br />

availability. It should be stressed<br />

that this ratio is only calculated<br />

here for the closed part of the cycle<br />

and is not the second-law<br />

efficiency of the full cycle.<br />

Comparison of the efficiency for<br />

the three cases is presented in Fig.<br />

9. It seems that the use of<br />

alternative fuels leads to better<br />

second-law efficiency. However,<br />

Diesel Metan Metanol<br />

especially as far as the comparison<br />

Fig. 9 – Second-law efficiency.<br />

between methane and methanol is<br />

concerned, the difference is small so that conclusions should be drawn with<br />

caution given the assumptions of the current analysis.<br />

Methanol vapor, for instance, was assumed to be an ideal gas but this is<br />

only a coarse approximation. More accurate modelling of the thermodynamic<br />

properties of methanol may alter the injected fuel availability.<br />

Moreover, for the accurate calculation of the irreversibility created during<br />

combustion, an accurate computation of methanol combustion kinetics is<br />

necessary. It would also be interesting to investigate the effect of the fact that<br />

this is a single-zone analysis by incorporating the current arguments in multizone<br />

codes. Revisiting the above assumptions may yield more accurate<br />

information about the advantages Figs. 6–9 imply for oxygenated fuels.<br />

However, the main point remains that entropy increase during combustion is<br />

smaller for such fuels because of the lower mixing entropy of the mixture of<br />

reactants.<br />

5. Conclusions<br />

1. A method for the analytic calculation of irreversibility and exhaust gas<br />

availability is generalized and used to evaluate alternative fuels in a directinjection,<br />

naturally-aspirated, four-stroke diesel engine.<br />

2. Combustion irreversibility is shown to be the main source of<br />

irreversibility during the engine operation and its differential variation is

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