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To extend the operational range of premixed diesel combustion, fuel reformation by piston induced compression of rich homogeneous air-fuel mixtures was conducted in this study. Reformed gas compositions and chemical processes were first simulated with the chemistry dynamics simulation, CHEMKIN Pro, by changing the intake oxygen content, intake air temperature, and compression ratio. A single cylinder diesel engine was utilized to verify the simulation results. With the simulation and experiments, the characteristics of the reformed gas with respect to the reformer cylinder operating condition were obtained. Further, the thermal decomposition and partial oxidation reaction mechanisms of the fuel in extremely low oxygen concentrations were obtained with the characteristics of the gas production at the various reaction temperatures.

The engine performance and the exhaust gas emissions in a dual fuel compression ignition engine with natural gas as the main fuel and a small quantity of pilot injection of diesel fuel with the ultra-high injection pressure of 250 MPa as an ignition source were investigated at 0.3 MPa and 0.8 MPa IMEP. With increasing injection pressure the unburned loss decreases and the thermal efficiency improves at both IMEP conditions. At the 0.3 MPa IMEP the THC and CO emissions are significantly reduced when maintaining the equivalence ratio of natural gas with decreasing the volumetric efficiency by intake gas throttling, but the NOx emissions increase and excessive intake gas throttling results in a decrease in the indicated thermal efficiency. Under the 250 MPa pilot injection condition simultaneous reductions in the NOx, THC, and CO emissions can be established with maintaining the equivalence ratio of natural gas by intake gas throttling.

Dual fuel combustion with premixed natural gas as the main fuel and diesel fuel as the ignition source was investigated in a 0.83 L, single cylinder, DI diesel engine. At low loads, increasing the equivalence ratio of natural gas to around 0.5 with intake throttling makes it possible to reduce the THC and CO emissions as well as to improve the thermal efficiency. At high loads, increasing the boost pressure moderates the combustion, but increases the THC and CO emissions, resulting in deterioration of the thermal efficiency. The EGR is essential to suppress the rapid combustion. As misfiring occurs with a compression ratio of 14.5 and there is excessively rapid combustion with 18.5 compression ratio, 16.5 is a suitable compression ratio.

It was reported that n-heptane and toluene blended fuels (NTL series fuels) showed the dual phase high temperature heat release (DP-HTHR) combustion in a previous SAE paper [1]. DP-HTHR has the potential to enlarge the engine operational range to high load conditions and lower the engine combustion noise. Further research has been reported in this paper. Initial interests were in the combustion characteristics of a second “bump” in the high temperature heat release (2nd HTHR) in DP-HTHR, since this kind of two-stage combustion appears, when CO oxidation radically occurs over the 1450K temperature range.