Transitional sustainability with improved combustion and reduced emissions from heavy fuel oil (HFO) utilization in boilers, furnaces and marine engines can be achieved by blending methanol/ethanol. However, it leads to emulsions which pose techno-economic challenges regarding its production, surfactant cost, storage stability and uneven blend ratios. To address this challenge, this work proposes, for the first time, 1-pentanol as a blending agent to HFO. Results show that pentanol produces fully miscible mixtures up to 30% by wt. without co-solvent as well as greatly reduces HFO viscosity. Isolated droplet evaporation and combustion experiments at flame-like conditions are carried out considering three mixtures of pentanol in HFO: 5, 10 and 25%wt. (P5, P10 and P25, respectively). Novel and detailed results describing the effect of blending are obtained across the entire consumption history of HFO, namely, liquid evaporation, cenosphere morphology using SEM-EDX and its subsequent combustion. Under both reducing and oxidizing conditions, a major amount of pentanol preferentially evaporates during the heat-up period, inducing violent micro-explosions. This phenomenon causes a major reduction in the liquid lifetime of HFO (~10–18% with P10), reducing also the ignition delay time (~15–20% with P10). The remaining amount of pentanol affects the pyrolysis+polymerization stage, thereby generating cenospheres which are smaller in size (~31.3% reduction with P10 in 0% O 2 ) and have similar external structures but with thinner and more porous walls, and hence their burning times are also reduced (~6.3–24.7% with P10). These positive impacts suggest that blending HFO with 10% pentanol, which has promising potential as next generation bio-alcohol, may constitute an alternative strategy until the HFO sector is decarbonized. • Potential of a next generation bio-alcohol blend: HFO/1-Pentanol is explored. • Up to 30% by wt., pentanol blends without requiring co-solvents or surfactants. • Droplet tests reveal novel insights into pentanol's impact on HFO combustion stages. • Added pentanol affects cenosphere structure, reduces its size and consumption time. • 10% pentanol in HFO enhances all aspects of its combustion behavior.
Poonawala et al. (Wed,) studied this question.