Impact of Jojoba Bio-Gasoline as an Octane Booster on the Performance, Abnormal Combustion, and Emissions of a Spark-Ignition Engine

In this article, an experimental investigation on octane boosting was performed using a renewable material. A fully instrumented research spark-ignition engine, Ricardo E6/MS, was used to perform the experiments. This experimental work was achieved to reveal the effect of Jojoba bio-gasoline, as an octane booster, and its effect on basic gasoline specifications. Therefore different blends of basic gasoline (a mixture of reformate and isomerated gasoline) and Jojoba bio-gasoline were prepared. Also, the influences of using such blends on the performance and emissions at various operating conditions, as well as the engine knock and pre-ignition were intensively examined. The investigation revealed that boosted gasoline with a research octane number of 90, 92, and 95 can be obtained by blending basic gasoline with 13, 16, and 20.9% of Jojoba bio-gasoline, respectively. These blends exhibited negligible changes in gasoline specifications, brake power, fuel consumption, and emissions compared with those of commercial gasolines. Moreover, greater engine resistance to knock and pre-ignition were experienced with boosted gasoline compared to normal gasoline at all engine speeds. Thus, the spark-ignition engine could run steadily with such blends without any modifications.