Search Results

In-cylinder thermochemical fuel reforming (TFR), which involves running one cylinder rich of stoichiometric and routing its entire exhaust back into the intake manifold, is an attractive method for improving engine performances. Compared with other hydrocarbon fuels, the chemical structure of methane is more stable owing to much shorter carbon chain. As ethanol contains hydroxyl in chemical structure, it potentially generates OH radical during the combustion. Therefore, adding ethanol into natural gas (NG) might help the thermochemical reforming process in engine cylinder. This paper focused on researching the effects of ethanol-NG combined in-cylinder TFR on engine performances, before which the effect of NG in-cylinder TFR was examined in detail. Cylinder #4 (TFR cylinder) was running rich and its cooled exhaust was coupled to the intake manifold of a four-cylinder engine during the experiments.

Developing advanced combustion mode has been the active area for high efficiency and ultra-low emissions of the next-generation internal combustion engines. In this paper, a series of experiments were conducted in a modified single-cylinder compression ignition engine for operating a brand-new combustion mode denoted as intelligent charge compression ignition (ICCI) mode. By using two common-rail systems, commercial gasoline and diesel were alternately directly injected into the cylinder through multi-injection strategies in the injection timing range of 50~320 °CA BTDC. Thus, the in-cylinder stratified condition can be flexibly and accurately adjusted in this unique combustion mode. The key injection parameters, such as gasoline injection timing and diesel split ratio, were investigated to explore their effects on engine combustion, emissions, and fuel consumption.