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A 1-Dimensional (1-D) model of fluid dynamic and chemistry kinetics following hot spot auto-ignition has been developed to simulate the process from auto-ignition to pressure wave propagation. The role of wall effect on the physical-chemical interaction process is numerically studied. A pressure wave is generated after hot spot auto-ignition and gradually damped as it propagates. The reflection of the wall forms a reflected pressure wave with twice the amplitude of the incident wave near the wall. The superposition of the reflected and forward pressure waves reinforces the intensity of the initial pressure wave. Wall effect is determined by the distance between the hot spot center and the cylinder wall. Hot spot auto-ignition near the wall easily initiates detonation under high-temperature and high-pressure conditions because pressure wave reflection couples with chemical reactions and propagates in the mixture with high reactivity.

Gasoline engines suffer low thermal efficiency and diesel engines have the emission problem of the trade-off between NOx and soot emissions. Homogeneous Charge Induced Ignition (HCII) is introduced using a port injection of gasoline to form a homogeneous charge and using a direct injection of diesel fuel to ignite. HCII has the potential to achieve high thermal efficiency and low emission combustion. However, HCII combustion mode still has problems of high THC emissions at low load and high pressure rise rate at high load. In order to improve the gasoline reactivity and reduce THC emissions, double injection of diesel was applied in HCII mode. In order to reduce peak pressure rise rate (PPRR), a two-staged high-temperature heat release is achieved at suitable engine condition. The effects of HCII mode on combustion and emission characteristics are studied in a light-duty engine.

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.

A catalyst surfaced on Ag/Al2O3 substrate for the selective catalyst reduction (SCR) of NOx by ethanol was evaluated in a diesel engine, and the effect of the catalyst on the reduction of NOx from the diesel engine under the EURO III ESC test modes was also investigated. The reductant injecting device was designed by means of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis, and the engine test bench including the reductant injection system for the evaluation of the NOx-SCR catalyst performance was established. On the bench, the SCR catalyst with the ethanol reductant was tested at different temperatures and space velocities (SV), and integrated with an oxidation catalyst to reduce the diesel exhaust emissions of NOx, HC and CO. Under the conditions of the SV=30,000 h-1 and the exhaust temperature range of 350∼420°C, the NOx conversion efficiency is high over 90% and low beyond the temperature range.

Premixed diesel combustion offers the potential of high thermal efficiency and low emissions, however, because the rapid rate of pressure rise and short combustion durations are often associated with low temperature combustion processes, noise is also an issue. The reduction of combustion noise is a technical matter that needs separate attention. Engine noise research has been conducted experimentally with a premixed diesel engine and techniques for engine noise simulation have been developed. The engine employed in the research here is a supercharged, single cylinder DI diesel research engine with a high pressure common rail fuel injection system. In the experiments, the engine was operated at 1600 rpm and 2000 rpm, the engine noise was sampled by two microphones, and the sampled engine noise was averaged and analyzed by an FFT sound analyzer.

Homogeneous Charge Induced Ignition (HCII) combustion is believed to be a promising approach to achieve clean and high efficiency combustion. HCII can be realized by using port-injection of the high-volatile fuel (gasoline) to prepare in-cylinder homogeneous charge and direct injection of the high-ignitable fuel (diesel) near the top dead center to control the start of combustion. In the current study, a numerical study was carried out to understand the mixing and auto-ignition process in HCII combustion. A multicomponent chemical kinetic mechanism for gasoline and diesel, consisting of n-heptane, iso-octane, ethanol, toluene, diisobutylene and n-decane, has been developed for predicting their ignition and oxidation. The final mechanism consists of 104 species and 398 reactions. This mechanism was validated with the experimental data of ignition delay times and laminar flame speeds for each component and real transportation fuels.

Ammonia (NH3), a zero-carbon fuel, has great potential for internal combustion engine development. However, its high ignition energy, low laminar burning velocity, narrow range of flammability limits, and high latent heat of vaporization are not conducive for engine application. This paper numerically investigates the feasibility of utilizing ammonia in a heavy-duty diesel engine, specifically through low-pressure direct injection (LP-DI) of hydrogen to ignite ammonia combustion. Due to the lack of a well-corresponding mechanism for the operating conditions of ammonia-hydrogen engines, this study serves only as a trend-oriented prediction. The paper compares the engine's combustion and emission performance by optimizing four critical parameters: excess air ratio, hydrogen energy ratio, ignition timing, and hydrogen injection timing. The results reveal that excessively high hydrogen energy ratios lead to an advanced combustion phase, reducing indicated thermal efficiency.

A fluid dynamic mathematical model of the room airflow in monolith was established by an equivalent continuum approach. The commercial CFD code STAR-CD was used to simulate multi-dimensional steady flows in automotive catalytic converters. In order to verify the fluid dynamic model of the converter, a three-hole Pitot tube was adopted to measure the velocity distribution at the rear of the monolith. Computing results are in good agreement with experiments, which means the established model is feasible and can be applied to predict the flow performances of various catalytic converters. Then, the enhanced diffusion header (EDH) converters and oblique diffuser converters with different configurations were designed and simulated by the CFD code. Simulation results indicate that EDH and an oblique diffuser can improve the flow uniformity and decrease pressure loss in the converters. These results provide a useful guide for the optimum design of automotive catalytic converters.

Two premixed compression ignition modes for low octane gasoline are numerically investigated. The multiple premixed compression ignition (MPCI) mode is featured with a sequence of “spray- combustion- spray- combustion”, while the partially premixed compression ignition (PPCI) mode is a sequence of “spray- spray- combustion”. This paper compares the combustion process of the two modes using multi-dimensional CFD code, KIVA-3v, which can perform chemical reaction calculations for different fuels by a discrete multiple component (DMC) method. The fuel used for simulation consists of 58.5% i-C8H18 and 41.5% n-C7H16 in volume, and has the same RON and similar physical properties to straight-run naphtha used in the experiment. The engine operating condition is fixed at a 1600rpm and 0.7 MPa IMEP. The injection strategies for these two modes are different. All of the parameters in the simulation come from the single cylinder engine experiments.

The fundamental parameters related to engine combustion and performances, such as, heating value, theoretical air-fuel ratio, adiabatic flame temperature, carbon dioxide (CO2), and nitric oxide (NO) emissions, specific heat and engine thermal efficiency were investigated with computations for a wide range of oxygenated fuels. The computed results showed that almost all of the above combustion-related parameters are closely related to oxygen content in the fuels regardless of the kinds or chemical structures of oxygenated fuels. An interesting finding was that with the increase in oxygen content in the fuels NO emission decreased linearly, and the engine thermal efficiency was almost unchanged below oxygen content of 30 wt-% but gradually decreased above 30 wt-%.

The chemical composition of marketed gasoline varies depending on the crude oil, refinery processes of oil refineries, and season. The combustion characteristics of HCCI engines are very sensitive to the fuel composition, and a fuel standard for HCCI is needed for HCCI vehicles to be commercially viable. In this paper, the effects of the structure of the fuel components on auto-ignition characteristics and HCCI engine performance were investigated. The engine employed in the experiments is a research, single cylinder HCCI engine with a compression ratio of 14.7. The intake manifold was equipped with a heater attachment allowing control of the intake air temperature up to 150 °C at 2000 rpm. Thirteen kinds of hydrocarbons, 4 kinds of paraffins, 3kinds of naphthenes, and 6 kinds of aromatics, were chosen for the investigation, and 20vol% of each of the pure hydrocarbons was blended with the 80 vol% of PFR50 fuel.

Multi-mode combustion is an ideal combustion strategy to utilize HCCI for internal combustion engines. It combines HCCI combustion mode for low-middle load and traditional SI mode for high load and high speed. By changing the cam profiles from normal overlap for SI mode to the negative valve overlap (NVO) for HCCI mode, as well as the adjustment of direct injection strategy, the combustion mode transition between SI and HCCI was realized in one engine cycle. By two-step cam switch, the throttle action is separated from the cam action, which ensures the stabilization of mode transition. For validating the feasibility of the stepped switch, the influence of throttle position on HCCI combustion was carefully studied. Based on the research, the combustion mode switch was realized in one engine cycle; the whole switch process including throttle action was realized in 10 cycles. The entire process was smooth, rapid and reliable without any abnormal combustion such as knocking and misfiring.

Palm oil has the important advantage of productivity compared to other vegetable oils such as rapeseed oil and soybean oil. However, the cold flow performance of palm oil methyl ester (PME) is poorer than other vegetable oil based biodiesel fuels. Previous research by the authors has shown that ethanol blending into PME improves the cold flow performance and considerably reduces smoke emission. The reduced smoke may be expected to allow an expansion in the EGR limit and lead to reduced NOx. This paper experimentally analyses the influence of EGR on smoke and NOx emissions from the diesel combustion with PME/ethanol blended fuel. The mechanisms in the smoke reduction are also analyzed.

Premixed diesel combustion blending high volatility fuels into diesel fuel were investigated in a modern diesel engine. First, various fractions of normal heptane and diesel fuel were examined to determine the influence of the blending of a highly ignitable and volatile fuel into diesel fuel. The indicated thermal efficiency improves almost linearly with increasing normal heptane fraction, particularly at advanced injection timings when the fuel is not injected directly into the piston cavity. This improvement is mainly due to decreases in the other losses, ϕother which are calculated with the following equation based on the energy balance. ηu: The combustion efficiency calculated from the exhaust gas compositions ηi: The indicated thermal efficiency ϕex: The exhaust loss calculated from the enthalpy difference between intake and exhaust gas The decreases in the other losses with normal heptane blends are due to a reduction in the unburned fuel which does not reach the gas analyzer.

Smokeless and ultra low NOx combustion without knocking in a dual-fuel diesel engine with induced LPG as the main fuel was established with a uniquely developed piston cavity divided by a lip in the sidewall. A small quantity of diesel fuel was directly injected at early compression stroke into the lower part of the cavity as an ignition source for this confined area, and this suppressed explosively rapid combustion just after ignition and spark-knock like combustion at later stage. A combination of the divided cavity, EGR, and intake air throttling was effective to simultaneously eliminate knocking, and reduce THC and NOx significantly.

Knocking is the main obstacle of increasing compression ratio to improve the thermal efficiency of gasoline engines. In this paper, the concept of stratified stoichiometric mixture (SSM) was proposed to suppress knocking in gasoline engines. The rich mixture near the spark plug increases the speed of the flame propagation and the lean mixture in the end gas suppresses the auto ignition. The overall air/fuel ratio keeps stoichiometric to solve the emission problem using three way catalysts (TWC). Moreover, both the rich zone and lean zone lead to soot free combustion due to homogeneous mixture. The effect on the knocking of homogeneous and stratified mixture was studied in a direct injection spark ignition (DISI) engine using numerical simulation and experimental investigation respectively.

Ammonia-selective catalytic reduction (SCR) systems have been introduced commercially in diesel vehicles, however catalyst systems with higher conversion efficiency and better control characteristics are required to know the actual emissions during operation and the emissions in random test cycles. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is an effective approach when applied to SCR catalyst development, and many models have been proposed, but these models need experimental verification and are limited in the situations they apply to. Further, taking account of redox cycle is important to have better accuracy in transient operation, however there are few models considering the cycle. Model development considering the redox reactions in a zeolite catalyst, Cu-ZSM-5, is the object of the research here, and the effects of exhaust gas composition on the SCR reaction and NH3 oxidation at high temperatures are investigated.

The ignition of lubricating oil droplet has been proved to be the main factor for pre-ignition and the following super-knock in turbocharged gasoline direct injection engine. In this paper, the ignition process of lubricating oil droplet in combustible ambient gaseous mixture was investigated in a rapid compression machine (RCM). The pre-ignition induction by oil droplet of the ambient gaseous mixture was analyzed under different initial droplet volume and effective temperature conditions. The oil droplet was suspended on a tungsten fiber in the combustion chamber and the ignition process was recorded by a high-speed camera through the quartz window mounted at the end of the combustion chamber. The pressure traces were also obtained by a sensor in order to get the ignition delay and analyze the combustion process in detail.

Soot emissions in the combustion process of diesel engines are greatly harmful to the environment and human health. Consequently, there is large interest and great efforts in decreasing soot emission from diesel engines to meet the increasingly stringent emission standards. The mechanisms of soot formation and oxidation so far have not been well understood. Laser induced incandescence (LII) is particularly suited to measure the instantaneous spatial distribution of the soot volume concentration, which can offer much needed detailed information of soot distribution for better understanding of soot formation and oxidation. In this paper, a two-color laser induced incandescence (2C-LII) technique was implemented for measuring absolute soot volume fraction in a laminar diesel fuel diffusion flame.

Gasoline Compression Ignition has been widely studied in recent years. The in-cylinder stratified charge in gasoline Partially Premixed Compression Ignition (PPCI) can extend the high load range with lower pressure rise rate than Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI). However, it is still not clear that whether there is flame propagation in the gasoline compression igntion mode and how the flame propagation influences the combustion process and pollution formation. In order to investigate the effect of flame, several gasoline compression ignition cases, including the single-stage and two-stage heat release processes, are simulated with the KIVA-3V Release 2 code in this study. The G-equation is employed to account for flame propagation, and the reduced i-octane/n-heptane mechanism is used to handle the chemical reactions. The results show that the flame propagation exists in the combustion process and it can accelerate the heat release slightly.