The foresight of a petroleum shortage and an ecological conscience is moving scientists to look for new sources of energy and to develop more efficient combustion processes and reduced emissions. Natural gas is a reduced emission fuel, whose consumption increases every year. The present work evaluates a dual fuel compression ignition engine. The major portion of the fuel burned is natural gas. The Diesel fuel acts as combustion starter, which ignites under the compression heat. Diesel fuel is used only as an ignition source. The partial substitution of Diesel fuel by natural gas increases the combustion efficiency and achieves significant emission reduction, because the combustion of natural gas produces less emission than the combustion of Diesel fuel. Initially, it was made a reference test using only Diesel fuel for comparison with following tests. There were made tests with varied proportions of Diesel fuel and natural gas, and with variable injection angles. There were made three repetitions for each test, including the reference test. The best performance was obtained with 22% of Diesel fuel and 13 L min-1 of natural gas, and with the engine original injection angle (21º). In this case, the average power was 14% above the standard engine and the cost of consumption was 46% lower than the reference test.
dual fuel engine; Diesel engine; natural gas
