LAUSR

Abstract Ethanol has gradually become a commonly used additive in diesel to reduce the carbon foot print of the combustion products. In the process of production, transportation and storage, once the accidental leaked ethanol-diesel blend fuel is ignited, the flame will spread very fast and cause great threaten to people's lives and properties, the combustion properties of ethanol-diesel blends is thus a matter of great concern to us. A set of experiments was conducted to study the effects of fuel depth and ullage height on liquid flame spread of diesel and 5% ethanol-diesel. Results showed that as the fuel depth increases under ullage effect, the flame spread rate increases first and then maintain constant. For 5% ethanol-diesel, the flame spread rate decreases monotonously and then tends to be unchanged with ullage height due to the higher combustion efficiency and oxygen content of ethanol-diesel. For deep pools, the surface velocity increases with fuel depth. Moreover, the flash flame pulsation frequency is weakly affected by the fuel depth and presents a negative relationship with ullage height. The study on these issues may have the potential to benefit the current safety production, utilization and management of the energy of ethanol-diesel blends.