The influence of fuel qualities on white smoke emissions from light-duty diesel engine

In many countries, cetane number and distillation properties of diesel fuel have been changing, thus affecting the performance of diesel engines. This paper describes investigations made on the effect of diesel fuel quality on white smoke (one of the important emissions of diesel engines). The result of simple laboratory tests simulating high altitude conditions plus field tests using three types of diesel engines supplied with various types of diesel fuels is given. It was found that white smoke appearing tendency correlated best with cetane number and the 90 percent distillation point of the fuel. The field test performed at high altitude correlated well with the simple laboratory tests.