Investigation on performance of ethanol-diesel blends in CI engine using fuzzy AHP-TOPSIS

Abstract

The increasing demand for energy due to industrial growth and urbanisation has led to a surge in petroleum-based fuel consumption, prompting researchers to explore alternative energy sources, with ethanol-diesel mixtures identified as a critical variable for producing a more effective, harmonic, and less polluting alternative fuel for automobiles. The present research employs the hybrid Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) technique called Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) and Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to rank ethanol-diesel mixtures based on diesel engine performance under various load conditions. In order to acquire data, the different ethanol-diesel combinations were generated by the addition of 5%, 8%, 10%, and 12% ethanol in diesel and tested in a 4-stroke inline 4-cylinder liquid-cooled diesel engine under 5 kg, 10 kg, 15 kg, and 20 kg loads, respectively. The ethanol-diesel combinations were ranked using four criteria: brake thermal efficiency (BTE), brake-specific fuel consumption (BSFC), exhaust gas temperature (EGT), and total fuel consumption (TFC). The FAHP-TOPSIS approach determined the relative importance of each criterion, with BTE ranking as the top weighted criterion, with a 10% ethanol and 90% diesel blend at 20 kg load as the optimum alternative.