Numerical modeling of acetone–butanol–ethanol and diesel blends droplet evaporation process

• Droplet evaporation model of acetone–butanol–ethanol (ABE) and diesel blends.
• ABE local boiling points quickly being exceeded causes internal gasification.
• Increasing mass fraction of ABE or ambient temperature shorten droplet lifetime.
• ABE Mass fraction and ambient temperature affect performance of internal gasification.

To investigate the evaporation characteristics of acetone–butanol–ethanol (ABE) and diesel blends, a multi-component evaporation model for ABE–diesel blend droplet coupled with six components to represent diesel and Universal Functional Activity Coefficient (UNIFAC) method has been built and validated with droplet fiber-suspension evaporation experimental results. The evaporation characteristics of ABE–diesel blend as well as the effects of ABE mass fraction and ambient temperature are analyzed. The results show that ABE–diesel blend droplets evaporate faster than diesel, the addition of ABE affects the early stage of evaporation process, especially at high temperature, which lead to the occurrence of internal gasification observed in experiments. With increasing the ABE mass fraction, the evaporation rate increases, and the internal gasification is more prone to occur later but preform more intensively. The droplet lifetime decreases non-linearly with the increasing ambient temperature, and the evaporation of low volatile components are enhanced significantly. Meanwhile, the increasing ambient temperature leads to the performance of internal gasification faster and more intense.