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This paper provides new insights on the mechanism of the smokeless diesel combustion with oxygenated fuels, based on a combination of soot kinetic modeling and optical diagnostics. The chemical effects of fuel compositions, including aromatics - paraffins blend, neat oxygenated fuels and oxygenate additives, on sooting equivalence ratio ‘ϕ’ - temperature ‘T’ dependence were numerically examined using a detailed soot kinetic model. To better understand the physical factors affecting soot formation in oxygenated fuel sprays, the effects of injection pressure and ambient gas temperature on the flame lift-off length and relative soot concentration in oxygenated fuel jets were experimentally investigated. The computational results show that the leaner mixture side of soot formation peninsula on the ϕ - T map, rather than the lower temperature one, should be utilized to suppress the formation of PAHs and ultra-fine particles together with the large reduction in particulate mass.

In this study, the novel fuel design concept has been proposed in order to realize the low emission and combustion control in engine systems. In this fuel design concept, the mixed fuels with a high volatility fuel (gasoline or gaseous fuel components) and a low volatility fuel (gas oil or fuel oil components) are used in order to improve the spray characteristics by flash boiling. In our previous papers on this study, the fundamental characteristics of spray and its combustion of mixed fuel were reported. In this paper, heat release and exhaust emission (smoke, NOx and THC) characteristics of single cylinder diesel engine operated with the mixed fuels were investigated under each load. The exhaust performance of diesel engine could be improved using mixed fuel, because fuel properties and spray characteristics were controlled by changing mixing fraction of the mixed fuel.

Considering the bell-shaped temperature dependence of soot particle formation, the control of flame temperature has a possibility to drastically suppress of soot formation. Furthermore, oxygenated fuels are very effective on soot reduction, and the use of these kinds of fuels has a potentiality for smokeless diesel combustion. In this paper, the effects of flame lift-off and flame temperature on soot formation in oxygenated fuel sprays were experimentally investigated using a constant volume combustion vessel which simulated diesel engine conditions. The diffusion flame lift-off length was measured in order to estimate the amount of the oxygen entrained upstream of the flame lift-off length in the fuel jet. This was determined from time-averaged OH chemiluminescence imaging technique. Also, the flame temperature and soot concentration were simultaneously evaluated by means of two-color method.

In the actual spray combustion fields, coupled combustion process should be occurred, between the pre-evaporate fuel component and remaining liquid droplets. Therefore it is insufficient to clarify the fundamental spray combustion mechanism with use of only droplet or only premixed mixture analyze method. In this study, the premixed mixture - droplets coupled combustion field was focused as a model of the actual spray combustion field. In the experiments, the effect of the flame pattern and the combustion rate constant by the interference between the droplets were clarified with the variation of fuels used by droplets. Besides, the effect of the premixed gas surrounding the droplets was clarified by the experiment on coupled combustion. The experiments were carried out under the normal gravity field and the micro gravity field to estimate the effect of convection in combustion field

Soot formation process inside the combustion chamber of an DI diesel engine is focused as a phenomenological basic scheme by using several optical diagnostics technique for the improvement of diesel exhaust emission. We have conducted the series of optical measurement research for the clarification of combustion field in an DI diesel engine. Then, this paper is a kind of review by adding the fuel vapor properties and particle image velocimetry (PIV) analysis with focusing the soot formation process. The experiments were carried out in a small sized high-speed DI diesel engine installed with an optical access view. The spray characteristics and its flow field in 2-D field were measured by laser sheet scattering (LIS) method and PIV scheme.

A phenomenological or empirical model based on experimental results obtained from various optical measurements is critical for the understanding of DI diesel combustion phenomena as well as for the improvement of its emission characteristics. Such a model could be realized by the application of advanced optical measurement, which is able to isolate a particular phenomenon amongst complicated physical and chemical interactions, to a DI diesel combustion field. The authors have conducted experimental studies to clarify the combustion characteristics of unsteady turbulent diffusion flames in relation to the soot formation and oxidation process in a small-sized DI diesel engine. In the present study, the effect of fuel vapor concentration on the process of early combustion and soot formation has been investigated using several optical measurements.

This paper confirms a structure for the soot formation process inside a burning diesel jet plume of oxygenated fuels. An explanation of how the soot formation process changes by the use of oxygenated fuel in comparison with that for using a conventional diesel fuel, and why oxygenated fuel drastically suppresses the soot formation has been derived from the chemical kinetic analysis. A detailed chemical kinetic mechanism, which is combined with various proposed chemical kinetic models including normal paraffinic hydrocarbon oxidation, oxygenated hydrocarbon oxidation, and poly-aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) formation, was developed in present study. The calculated results are presented to elucidate the influence of fuel mixture composition and fuel structure, especially relating to oxygenated fuels, on PAH formation. The analysis also provides a new insight into the initial soot formation process in terms of the temperature range of PAH formation.

A transient gas jet and its flame are the most fundamental phenomena of a transient spray and its flame breaking out in a CI engine and an SI engine with the direct injection system. In the case of CNG and LNG engines, the fuel itself is just gaseous state. The 2-LIF technique was applied to the transient gas jet to obtain the mixing process between the surroundings and it, and the simultaneous application of LII and LIS techniques were applied to the transient gas jet flame to obtain the soot formation process.

Four kinds of optical measurements were performed to investigate the process of soot formation and oxidation in a direct-injection (DI) diesel engine. Measurements were carried out in an optically accessible DI diesel engine that allows planar laser sheet for combustion diagnostics to enter the combustion chamber either horizontally or along the axis of the fuel jet. The temporal and spatial distribution of soot particles has been investigated using the laser- induced incandescence (LII) and high-speed direct photography. Fuel vapor concentration, which is directly linked to the soot formation process in diesel combustion, has been deduced from the images obtained by the measurements of laser shadowgraph and elastic Mie scattering. According to the experimental results, soot formation begins to occur near the injector nozzle in which a fuel-rich mixture is distributed with a homogeneous condition. LII signal is dominated by the fuel vapor concentration in initial combustion period.

In previous our work, we revealed that the flash boiling process could improve remarkably the spray atomization for the pure substance-single component fuel in relation to the port-injected S.I. engines. Then, we applied this flash boiling spray to the Diesel spray process by the use of the two phase region formed between liquefied CO2 and n-Tridecane as the first step of fuel design concept. And the promoted atomization properties could be obtained in this mixed fuel concept. Further, we could obtain the simultaneous reduction of NO and soot emissions in Diesel engine exhaust due to the spray internal EGR effect and reburning of soot. As the second step, we proposed a novel fuel design concept for low exhaust emission and combustion control, relating to mixed and reformulated fuels with a lower boiling point fuel such as gasoline components or gas fuel and a higher boiling point fuel such as gas oil or heavy oil components to obtain the both advantages of their fuels for combustion.

In SI engines with port injection system, the injected fuel spray adheres surely on the port wall and the inlet valve, consequently, the spray-wall interaction process leads to the generation of unburned hydrocarbons and uncontrollable mixture formation. This paper deals with the fuel mixture preparation process including basic research on characteristics of the wall-wetted fuel film on a flat wall inside a constant volume vessel. In the experiments, iso-octane mixed with biacetyl as a tracer dopant was injected through a pintle type injector against a flat glass wall under the ambient conditions of atmospheric pressure and room temperature. The thickness of the adhered fuel film on the wall was quantitatively measured by using laser induced fluorescence (LIF) technique, which provides 2-D distribution information with high special resolution as a function of the injection duration, the impingement distance from the injector to the wall, and the impingement angle against the wall.

We propose a new concept on simultaneous reduction of NO and soot emissions in Diesel engine exhaust by use of the diesel fuel oil (n-Tridecane) with liquefied CO2 dissolved. The CO2 dissolved component is expected to undergo flash boiling or gas separation when being injected into the combustion chamber, and improve spray atomization and mixing process both of which are primary factors to govern soot formation. Further, the internal EGR effect caused by CO2 component injected with the fuel is expected for NO formation. In order to assess this concept, spray dynamics measurement was conducted in the constant volume vessel with a variation of ambient pressure and temperature. Further, combustion experiments were carried out by using a rapid compression and expansion machine. Here, characteristics of the evaporative mixed fuel spray were examined by shadowgraph photography.

OH radical generated in a DI diesel engine has a close relationship to soot oxidation. To clarify this fact, the distribution of the natural emission of OH radical was captured by means of an interference filter system and that of soot was detected by the simultaneous application of a laser induced incandescence (LB) and a laser induced scattering (LIS). The experiments were carried out in a small sized high-speed DI diesel engine installed with an optical access view. The generation of OH radical and the formation/oxidation of soot are discussed by using both images.

Diesel sprays injected into a combustion chamber of a small sized high-speed CI engine impinge surely on a piston surface and a cylinder wall. As a consequence, their vaporization, mixture formation and combustion processes are affected by impingement phenomena. And the other important factors affecting on the processes is the injection pressure. Then, the distribution of the vapor concentration in a single diesel spray impinging on a flat and hot wall was experimented by the exciplex fluorescence method, as a simple case. The injection pressure was varied in the range from 55 MPa to 120 MPa. It is found that the distribution of the vapor concentration in this case is much leaner than that in the case of the low injection pressure of 17.8MPa.

CNG is one of the future fuel for a CI engine. Recently, the general tendency is the use of the high pressure injection system over 100 MPa in a CI engine for the near future severe regulation. Combustion phenomenon in a CI engine with such injection system is like a transient gas diffusion flame. The flow in a gas diffusion flame was investigated by the particle image velocimetry on its 2-D images, the relative soot concentration, the temperature and the relative CO2 concentration was detected in the experiments. And the model of transient gas diffusion flame was constructed by use of experimental data.

This paper deals with the particle distribution in Diesel spray under the non-evaporating condition from the analytical aspect based on our experimental results. In the analysis, TAB method of KIVA II code and the k-ε turbulent model were used, and the mono-disperse distribution of the initial parcel's diameter, whose size equals to the nozzle hole diameter, was utilized in conjunction with the breakup model. The size distribution of atomized droplets (i.e. the χ-squared distribution function) is justified with the degree of freedom. It is shown that the ambient gas, which is initially quiescent, is induced and led to a turbulent gas jet. The turbulent gas jet which has a equivalent momentum with the Diesel spray was also examined by Discrete Vortex method. The quantitative jet growth was shown to be possible for the estimation and determination in its initial boundary values at the nozzle.

An unsteady single spray of n-tridecane which was mixed with a small quantity of exciplex - forming dopants, that is naphthalene and TMPD, was impinged on a flat wall surface with high temperature of 550 K at a normal angle. These experiments were carried out in a quiescent N2 atmosphere with high temperature of 700 K and high pressure of 2.5 MPa. It was possible to generate the fluorescence emissions from the vapor and liquid phases in this spray, when a laser light sheet from a Nd:YAG laser was passing through the cross section of the spray containing its central axis. Then, clear 2 - D images of vapor and liquid phases in the spray were acquired simultaneously by this method. And, the vapor concentration was analyzed quantitatively by applying Lambert - Beer's law to the measured TMPD monomer fluorescence intensity from vapor phase, and by correcting the intensity for the effect of the quenching process due to the ambient temperature and fuel concentration.

For current passenger vehicles, multi-point injection (MPI) systems are extensively employed for gasoline engines due to ease of control and rapid response. In these systems, the pressure within the intake manifold to which the injectors are installed can fall below the saturated vapor pressure of some hydrocarbon components present in the fuel. Such a condition leads to an atomization process in which flash boiling occurs. In the present work, the atomization process under flash boiling conditions has been characterized both experimentally and theoretically. The experimental investigation has been carried out with a spray test facility consisting of a variable pressure chamber equipped with a pintle type fuel nozzle. Infrared Extinction/Scattering (IRES) is utilized to provide temporal and spatially resolved distribution of the fuel vapor concentration within the spray.

A transient gas jet seems to be a model of a diesel spray because it has no vaporization process. Recently, CNG is utilized in a diesel engine. In the case of diesel engine, sprays or jets have the free state in some cases, and they are impinging surely on the piston surface in the other cases. The 2-D image of acetylene gas with tracer particles was taken by high-speed photography. In both jets, the outer shape was measured on the images and the characteristics of the internal flow was obtained by particle image velocimetry. Then, the physical models of these jets were constructed by use of experimental results.

In this paper, spray characteristics were examined to deduce the effect of ambient gas properties. Considered ambient properties were the viscosity μa and density ρa, and thus the kinematic viscosity νa. The objective of this paper is to reveal the effect of compressibility of the ambient gas to spray formation. In the experiments, the changed ranges were And a standard-sac volume nozzle of hole diameter dn =0.25 mm (ln/dn=3.0) was used at constant injection pressure difference (Δp=16.2 MPa). Also the injection pressure was varied in the range of 55 to 120 MPa with a mini-sac volume nozzle of hole diameter dn =0.20 mm (ln/dn =5.5). Several different gases were used to change the ambient viscosity at a room temperature. From the experiments, it is obtained that larger the viscosity, the more the spray spreads in the radial direction, thus the spray angle gets larger and the tip penetration became shorter.