An experimental study of the puffing and evaporation characteristics of acetone–butanol–ethanol (ABE) and diesel blend droplets

Puffing and evaporation characteristics of acetone–butanol–ethanol (ABE) and diesel blend droplet under different ABE contents and ambient temperatures were investigated experimentally by using droplet suspension method. Both thermocouple wire and quartz fiber wire were adopted in this experiment to realize the measurement of droplet temperature, and minimize the effect of suspension wire. The experimental results show that, adding ABE component in diesel results in the droplet puffing, and increasing of ambient temperature promotes droplet puffing. With the increasing of ABE content, the onset point of puffing decreases first and then increases, and the average expansion speed and the frequency of puffing increase first and then decrease. Thus, an optimal volume blend ratio exists for puffing, which is found to be around 40%–50% ABE content. The occurrence of puffing decreases the duration of transient heating phase, and promotes the evaporation in the fluctuation evaporation phase. Thus, the overall evaporation duration decreases first and then increases with the ABE content increasing due to the effect of puffing at higher ambient temperature.