2012-18
Diesel-Water-Air Premixing Injector System In Burner
System : A Literature Review
ABSTRACT
These reviews are conducted survey on research
that related with topic development of diesel-water-
air premixing injector system in burner system. The
data from other journal have been reported and
available in UTHM e-library.
The review is divided in some element which is
the performance, emissions, and characteristics from
the system.
The research data is carried out the advantages of
using the system. The effect of water addition to fuel
by emulsification on combustion and emission
characteristics was investigated.
Water addition elongates the combustible range
to higher fuel equivalence ratio side by reduction of
PM. The water addition also reduces NOx emission
drastically. The reduction of NOx is caused by the
reduction of locally high temperature region, the
reduction of global flame temperature is not
significant[1].
The injector mixes fuel rapidly with water inside
the injector with support atomizing air. The mixture
composed of three fluid injected as spray into flame
stabilizer of burner.
Muhammad Hasmadi Bin Hassim
Tuan Muhammad Arfan Bin Tuan Ismail
Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia
Water addition is also effective to reduce PM
emission especially in higher fuel equivalence ratio.
Nox emission is strongly dependent on water flow
rate[2].
This review also explained the investigation of
emission performance of the injector that internally
rapid mixing type of injector useful technique to
introduce water into burner system.
INTRODUCTION
Nowadays world are more serious towards the
care environment where all the resulting technology
or new technology that will be generated should
emphasize the existence of the surrounding
environment. Thus the government sector call to
create green technologies to protect the environment
under the auspices of the ministry of energy, green
technology and water. This can be seen in the
increasingly widespread air pollution and it's
unhealthy impact on the country, which also causes
global warming causes rising today. One of the
obvious culprits is the result of using a diesel engine
system that causes unhealthy emissions. Shortly after
that a new idea is closely related to diesel engine
conceived with the idea of improvements on the
engine combustion system in which the existing fuel
is mixed with air and water introduced.
This paper summarizes the literature describing
of development of diesel water air premixing injector
system in burner system the time period covered in
this report dates to a similar review by other author
with their journal related with this topic.
By using a method which is mixture of water on
the fuel injector system can prolong and increase the
rate of combustion at high oil equilibrium ratio by
reduction of particle release. It can also reduce
nitrogen oxides (NOx) that are produced by the
engine. In addition, the use of this water can degrade
the high temperature at which fuel NOx production
factors[3]. The combustion chamber is also a spray
cleaner that is mixed with the water than no water
and it adds to the efficiency of the engine to operate.
Furthermore, the addition of water will induce the
hydro-gaseous reaction thus reduce the solid carbon
or smoke[4]. Hence, water addition to the fuel is able
to reduce both NOx and smoke simultenously[5].
In the present study, the combustion and
emission characteristics were compared by using gas
oil and water-emulsified gas oil with a burner system.
Firstly, the combustible limit was investigated in
wide range of equivalence ratio and atomizing air
ratio, then the emissions in interesting region were
intensively investigated[6].
The new injector that can use water directly in
combustion field will be first developed. This injector
is a type of fuel- water internally rapid mixing. Fuel
is mixed with water inside of the injector supported
by atomizing air. After mixing the, the mixture is
injected to the outside. In this way, water is
introduced directly into combustion field[7].
Comparison with existing injector will be
investigated due to the performance and emission
characteristics.
Fuel-water internally rapid mixing type of
injector
The configuration of a newly developed injector
will be explained first. Figure 1 shows detail of the
injector in section and photographs. This study names
this injector fuel-water internally rapid mixing type
of injector. Fuel and water are separately supplied to
a small mixing chamber inside of the injector. The
mixing chamber has a capacity of 3.9cc. Fuel is
supplied from a ring-shape slit with an outer-diameter
of 5.5mm and slit-width of 0.45mm. Water is
supplied from a centre hole with diameter of
2mm.The supplied fuel and water are rapidly mixed
in the mixing chamber with support of atomizing air.
The atomizing air is pressurized to about 0.2MPa and
introduced into the mixing chamber through four slits
of swirler shown in the picture. The air-flow forms
swirl flow to improve mixing[8]. The well-mixed
fluids; fuel, air and water are injected into
combustion field from eight small holes with
diameter of 1mm on the top of the chamber. The
advantage of using this injector is that water can be
available in combustion without emulsification
process. Surfactant which is necessary for water-
emulsified fuel becomes needless[9]. Further,
although water-emulsification sometimes increases
fuel viscosity that has bad influence on combustion,
this injector keeps fuel viscosity constant regardless
of water content[10]. Another merit is that, unlike
water-emulsified fuel, water content can be easily
adjusted by changing water flow rate in response to
combustion condition[11].

Figure 1 : Fuel-water internally rapid mixing type
Figure 2 is an external mixing type of injector,
which is generally used in burner. Fuel and air are
separately injected from the injector. The injector has
Table 1 : Physical properties of base fuel and water-emulsified fuel
the same swirler as the above developed injector to
form swirl flow of atomizing air. This injector needs
emulsified fuel when water is introduced. Emission
characteristics of this injector will be compared with
that of the internally rapid mixing type of injector.
Figure 2 : External mixing type
Production and physical properties of
water-emulsified fuel
In this review study, water, fuel and small
amount of additive were mixed to form water-
emulsified fuel by using ultra-sonic mixer. The base
fuel used in this study was JIS#2 diesel fuel (Gas Oil:
GO). The major properties of the fuel and water-
emulsified fuel are compared in Table 1. The obvious
difference is found in viscosity of water-emulsified
fuel as compared with the base material. The

viscosity increases drastically as water added up to
30%, and it shows the water in oil (O/W) phase at
this condition. Meanwhile, further addition of water
changes the phase to the oil in water (W/O) and
decreases the viscosity. Because GOW30 (30vol% of
water and 70vol% of GO) has less physical stability
for reliable experiment, the combustion
characteristics of GOW50 were mainly investigated
by comparing with those of pure GO fuel.
METHODOLOGY
Experimental Setup
Figure 2 shows schematic diagram of
experimental setup. The burner consists of an
injector, flame stabilizer, pilot flame igniter and a
chimney. The chimney has a height of 700mm. The
flame stabilizer has two tubes as shown in the lower
drawing. The inner tube has an inner-diameter of
96.4mm and height of 143mm from injector outlet.
The outer tube has an inner-diameter of 120mm.
Fuel, atomizing air and water supplied to the injector
are mixed in the injector in the case of the internally
rapid mixing type of injector. The fluids are further
mixed in the flame stabilizer after injection. The
secondary air is supplied into the flame stabilizer
through some small holes with diameter of
3mm. The holes are located at the base and lower part
of the side face of the inner tube. Some of secondary
air flow through crevice region between inner and
outer tubes. The secondary air can supply oxygen to
the flame upper of the flame stabilizer. The burner
combustion is started by the ignition of LPG. When
stable LPG flame is formed, fuel supply line is
changed from LPG pass to the injector; then
combustion of injected fuel commences. In the
experiment, exhaust gas concentration was analysed.
A part of exhaust gas was sampled by a water-cooled
sampling probe with suction hole diameter of 0.5mm.
The sampled gas was introduced into the portable gas
analyser (HORIBA, PG-240). The concentration of
NOx was measured by chemiluminescent method
(CLD), CO and CO2 by non-dispersive infrared
method (NDIR), O2 by zirconia method. Exhaust
particulate matters (PM) was collected on Teflon
filter. The PM concentration was determined by
measuring the filter weight before and after sampling.
PM was measured with two components, solid
carbon (SOLID) and soluble organic fraction (SOF),
by Soxhlet extraction method. SOLOID is the main
component in smoke and SOF is mainly composed of
unburned fuel components. The gas temperature,
T700, was measure at 700mm downstream from the
injector outlet.
 Figure 3 : 1st Experimental apparatus

Another 2nd experiment that are same with

related in this review study is like figure 4. shows the
schematics of the experimental setup. The fuel was
injected into the combustion area by the fuel injector
shown in figure 4, which atomizes the fuel assisted
by atomizing air. Secondary air was supplied into the
combustion area to cover the shortage of the air
introduced firstly as atomizing air. Thermocouple
was installed at h=700mm from the fuel injector to
measure the exhaust gas temperature. A sample gas
suction probe was set at 600mm from the injector to
measure the concentration of NOx, CO, CO2and
Particulate Matter (PM) in exhaust gas. Teflon filter
was used to collect the PM inside exhaust gas and the
Figure 4 : Second experimental apparatus
PM density was determined by measuring filter
weight before and after sampling. PM can be
divided into two major components, namely solid
carbon (SOLID) and soluble organic fraction (SOF).
SOLID is the main component in smoke, and SOF is
the unburned fuel component. SOLID and SOF were
measured individually by soxhlet extraction
method.The controllable parameter of the experiment
was the fuel type (pure or water-emulsified fuel), and
the flow rates of fuel Qf, atomizing air Qa, and
secondary air Q2. In the series of experiment, Figure 5 : Preparing for water, diesel fuel, and
additives and blending all the materials.
experimental results were analyzed by using two non-
dimensional parameters, those are fuel equivalence
ratio φ and atomizing air ratio Qa/Qt, where Qt is the For this experiment that run for test engine. By using
sum of Qa and Q2. 1000cc single cylinder and direct injection are
conducted on these experiments. The engine
For 3rd experiment is preparing biodiesel to see
specification is shown in table 2.
the effect of diesel fuel mixed water in engine
performance and emission. To make Bio Water
Diesel Fuel (BWDF), we prepared diesel fuel 75%,
water 15% and additive 15% [5]. First, we blended
all the ingredients not less than 15 minutes. The
longer for blending the fuel, the results will become
better. And the results, diesel fuel is mixed perfectly
by water shown in figure 5.

Table 2 : Engine specification

Table 3 : Operating condition in 17hours endurance

test
Experiments were carried out following SAE
Technical Series 942010 “Diesel Fuel Detergent
Additive Performance and Assessment”.
mentioned in that reference, experiments were done
in diesel engine one cylinder with zero load, 45%
load, 65% load and maximum load. The operating
condition was in 1500 rpm and with zero load, 1 kW,
2 kW, 3kW and 4 kW (4kW=80%).
DISCUSSION OF THE RESULT
incomplete combustion, fuel- air mixing that supports
combustion is promoted with the internally rapid
As mixing. Higher gas temperature of T700 proves
higher heat generation in this case.
Figure 7 is the same comparison as Fig.6 when
water is introduced into combustion. The external
mixing type of injector applies water-emulsified
soybean oil as fuel, and internally rapid mixing type
of injector blends soybean oil and water together with
atomizing air inside of the injector. Water content is
50% in volume. As compared with Fig.3, NOx is
reduced with the use of water in both water
emulsified and water mixing; further, PM is reduced

For 1st experiment in this review that gives the

result with this criteria:
Advantage of fuel-water internally rapid mixing
type of injector

In the experiment, emission characteristics of the

two injectors were first investigated. Figure 6
compares emissions when pure soybean oil is used as
fuel without water. The air condition of the burner;
namely, mass flow ratio of atomizing air to total air,
Qa/Qt, is kept constant of 0.26. In the figure,
equivalence ratio φ is defined based on mass flow
rate of fuel to total air including atomizing air and
second air. As seen from the figure, NOx emission is Figure 6 : Comparison of emission between two
almost same level with both injectors. Lower CO types of injector (Fuel : Soybean without water)

emission of internally rapid mixing than that of

external mixing indicates that the former type nozzle
has better combustion efficiency. At high load
condition of φ>0.8, both injectors produce particulate
matters (PM) that is mainly composed of SOLID.
The internally rapid mixing type of injector emits less
PM as compared with the external mixing type.
Considering that the SOLID is produced by
 Figure 8 : Comparison of flames (φ=1.2)

Emission Characteristics
Figure 7 : Comparison of emission between two In 2nd experiment that we can compared is the
types of injector (Fuel : Soybean with water-mixing
or water-emulsified, water 50%) emission characteristics when mixing diesel-water-
air. Figure 9 shows NOx, PM, and CO emission maps
as a function of equivalence ratio φ and atomization
Both show smokeless combustion at wide range of
air ratio Qa/Qt. Figure 10 shows the emission
equivalence ratio. Effects of water will be discussed
characteristics as a function of fuel equivalence ratio
below again. As compared with the two injectors,
φ with fixed Qa/Qt. As shown in Fig.9(a), NOx
external mixing type that uses water-emulsified fuel
shows higher CO emission. This type also produces
higher SOF emission than internally rapid mixing
type. These results suggest that external mixing type
has deterioration of combustion efficiency due to
incomplete combustion. High flame height caused by
inactive combustion leads to high gas temperature of
T700 at φ=1.2 using external mixing type of injector.
Figure 8 provides example of flame images at high
load condition of φ=1.2 using gas oil as fuel.
Considering that bright flame is mainly luminescence
of soot, water addition by both emulsified and water
mixing has strong effect on soot reduction. In
particular, internally rapid mixing injector shows
little luminous flame in the case of introducing water.
These kinds of flame characteristics correspond to
PM emissions shown in Figs.6 and 7.
 the case of GOW50, there is a smoke limit island
around φ=0.6, Qa/Qt=0.1 as shown in Fig.9(b). The
island is also shown in Fig.10(a) as peaked PM
emission characteristics. This is assumed to be
caused by incomplete combustion as follows. Lower
atomizing air flow rate deteriorates the fuel
atomization, thus combustion itself also becomes
inactive. Although combustion manages to be
maintained at higher equivalence ratio (around φ=1),
reduction of φ causes further degradation of
combustion and SOF once increased. Further
reduction of φ results in incomplete combustion,
which means the great part of fuel does not burn,
resulting all of the emission decreased. Although
there must be the same problem even in GO case,
Figure 9 : Emission maps as a function of GOW50 shows much severer degradation of
equivalence ratio and atomizing air ratio. atomization than GO case in lower Qa/Qt because the
total volumetric injection rate of GOW50 is twice as
concentration in GO case becomes higher with the
much of the GO and GOW50 has higher viscosity.
increment of Qa/Qt. This high NOx emission is
CO emission characteristics in both fuel types
resulted from promoted combustion by finer
are similar to the characteristics of PM emissions. In
atomization of fuel from increase of Qa/Qt. On the
Fig.9(c), the outer region of smoke limit corresponds
contrary, NOx emission in GOW50 case does not
with PM high emission region in Fig.9(b). However,
have significant emission peak as observed in GO
only in GOW50 case, the high CO emission region
case. By comparing the exhaust temperatures in all
exists even in inner region of combustible limit.
Qa/Qt cases in Fig.10, lower fuel equivalence ratio
results lower temperature in GOW50 than GO, and
higher φ yields higher temperature in GOW50. On
the other hand, NOx emission in GOW50 is
consistently lower than GO. This implies that global
temperature in combustion region, which is related
with exhaust temperature, is not a key factor of the
NOx reduction mechanism in GOW50. In Fig.10, the
main component of PM in GOW50 is SOF in all
cases of Qa/Qt. Furthermore SOLID component in
PM is perfectly suppressed in GOW50. This indicates
that water addition to the fuel suppresses the total
amount of PM, but increases the SOF component. In
 For experiment 3 here are the result based on
emission test:

NOx (Nitrogen Oxide)

Figure 11 : NOx emission DF and BWDF

before(above) and after(below) endurance test

After Endurance test, BWDF can reduce NOx

emission in minimum and also in maximum loads. In
maximum load(80%) BWDF can reduce NOx
emission up to 42 %.

CO (Carbon Oxide)

Figure 10 : Effect of fuel equivalence ratio and

atomizing air ratio on emission characteristics
Figure 12 : CO emission DF and BWDF before
endurance test
 Figure 14 : NO emission DF and BWDF
before(above) and after(below) endurance test

After endurance test, BWDF can reduce the NO

emission from minimum to maximum load up to
44.31%.

OPACITY
Figure 13 : CO emission DF and BWDF after
endurance test

After endurance test in maximum load (80%)

BWDF can reduce the CO emission up to 23.7%
comparing to DF.

NO (Nitrogen Oxide)

Figure 15 : Opacity DF and BWDF

In figure 15, the opacity in BWDF in minimum

to maximum is lower than DF. In minimum load,
BWDF can cut down the opacity up to 3.2%.
For all of these reasons, BWDF can take into
account for its use in the future as a new alternative
fuels, it can reduce emissions especially in big city
such as Kuala Lumpur or other big cities in the
world.

FUEL CONSUMPTION IN 17 HOURS ENDURANCE TEST

 Figure 16 : Fuel consumption in 17 hours running engine (1500 rpm – 4kW)

From figure 15, from one to 9 hours endurance test, BWDF has no advantages in fuel consumption compared to
DF. In 10 hours running engine, DF and BWDF have similar in fuel consumption. But in 11 hours of running
engine, BWDF is more efficient 5% than DF. In 17 hours of running engine, BWDF is the highest efficiency up to
15.85%.
2. Combustion is promoted by water mixing; hence,
high water content leads to low PM emissions as
CONCLUSION well as NOx emission at high load.
From this review paper study to develop diesel- 3. Three-fluids mixing can avoid the problem of the
water-air premixing injector in burner system that has increase of fuel viscosity happened with water
some method to develops. Here we can devide by emulsification.
group into 3 experiment: 4. Although water-emulsified fuel shows high CO
1st Experiment and SOF emissions at high load, the internally
1. The internally rapid mixing type of injector is rapid mixing produces less CO and SOF in spite
useful technique to introduce water into burner of using water.
combustion. The injector emits less PM at high 5. Mixing inside of the flame stabilizer is important
load of equivalence ratio over 0.9 as compared for PM reduction as well as in the mixing
with the external mixing type of injector. NOx chamber of the injector. High speed spray has an
emission is strongly dependent on water flow rate. effect on PM reduction.

nd
2 Experiment
1. Water addition to the fuel extends the combustible
limit especially in high fuel equivalence ratio and
high atomizing air ratio side. Combustible limits
in pure gas oil and water-emulsified gas oil are
determined by smoke in high atomizing air ratio.
In lower atomizing air ratio case, the combustible
limits are determined by unstable combustion or
smoke, because of the deterioration of
atomization.
2. NOx emission is drastically reduced by adding
water. The reduction of NOx is originated from
the reduction of local high temperature, which is
active source of NOx production. However,
reduction of global temperature is not significant,
thus thermal penalty is negligible.
3. Water addition to the fuel is effective to reduce
PM emission PM emission. The reduction of
local high temperature may cause the reduction of
reaction rate, which has a possibility of affording
a mixing time for better combustion for reducing
PM.
3rd Experiment
1. BWDF can reduce emission such as NOx up to
42%,CO up to 23.7%, NO up to 44.31%
2. In 11 hours of running engine, BWDF is more
efficient 5% than DF. In 17 hours of running
engine, BWDF is the highest efficiency up to
15.85%.
3. BWDF can reduce the smog or opacity up to 3.2%
compared to DF.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors would like to thank to Dr.Amir
Khalid who are give the task for this review study,
also thank you to Faculty of Mechanical and
Manufacturing Engineering, Universiti Tun Hussein
Onn Malaysia for the course subject taken.
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