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This work numerically investigates the detailed combustion kinetics of partially premixed combustion (PPC) in a diesel engine under three different premixed ratio fuel conditions. A reduced Primary Reference Fuel (PRF) chemical kinetics mechanism was coupled with CONVERGE-SAGE CFD model to predict PPC combustion under various operating conditions. The experimental results showed that the increase of premixed ratio (PR) fuel resulted in advanced combustion phasing. To provide insight into the effects of PR on ignition delay time and key reaction pathways, a post-process tool was used. The ignition delay time is related to the formation of hydroxyl (OH). Thus, the validated Converge CFD code with the PRF chemistry and the post-process tool was applied to investigate how PR change the formation of OH during the low-to high-temperature reaction transition. The reaction pathway analyses of the formations of OH before ignition time were investigated.

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) engine could provide both reduced operating cost and reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Stoichiometric operation with EGR and the three-way catalyst has become a potential approach for commercial LNG engines to meet the Euro VI emissions legislation. In the current study, numerical investigations on the knocking tendency of several combustion chambers with different geometries and corresponding performances were conducted using CONVERGE CFD code with G-equation flame propagation model coupled with a reduced natural gas chemical kinetic mechanism. The results showed that the CFD modeling approach could predict the knock phenomenon in LNG engines reasonably well under different thermodynamic and flow field conditions.

The application of oxygen-enriched or oxy-fuel combustion coupled with carbon capture and storage technology has zero carbon dioxide emission potential in the boiler and gas turbine of the power plant. However, the oxygen-enriched combustion with high oxygen level has few studies in internal combustion engines. The fundamental issues and challenges of high oxygen level are the great differences in the physical properties and chemical effects compared with the combustion in air condition. As a consequence, the diesel spray combustion characteristics at high oxygen level were investigated in an optical constant volume vessel. The oxygen volume fraction of tested gas was from 21% to 70%, buffered with argon. The high-speed color camera was used to record the natural flame luminosity.

In order to achieve high-efficiency and clean combustion in HCCI engines, combustion must be controlled reasonably. A great variety of species with various reactivities can be produced through low temperature oxidation of fuels, which offers possible solutions to the problem of controlling in-cylinder mixture reactivity to accommodate changes in the operating conditions. In this work, in-cylinder combustion characteristics with low temperature reforming (LTR) were investigated in an optical engine fueled with low octane number fuel. LTR was achieved through low temperature oxidation of fuels in a reformer (flow reactor), and then LTR products (oxidation products) were fed into the engine to alter the charge reactivity. Primary Reference Fuels (blended fuel of n-heptane and iso-octane, PRFs) are often used to investigate the effects of octane number on combustion characteristics in engines.

In the current, numerical study RCCI combustion and emission characteristics using various fuel strategies are investigated, including methanol, ethanol, n-butanol and gasoline as the low reactivity fuel, and diesel fuel as the high reactivity fuel. A reduced Primary Reference Fuel (PRF)-alcohol chemical kinetic mechanism was coupled with a computational fluid dynamic (CFD) code to predict RCCI combustion under various operating conditions. The results show that a higher quantity of diesel was required to maintain the same combustion phasing with alcohol-diesel fuel blends, and the combustion durations and pressure rise rates of methanol-diesel (MD) and ethanol-diesel (ED) cases were much shorter and higher than those of gasoline-diesel (GD) and n-butanol-diesel (nBD) cases. The simulations also investigated the sensitivities of the direct injection strategies, intake temperature and premixed fuel ratio on RCCI combustion phasing control.

Reactivity Controlled Compression Ignition (RCCI) has been shown to be an attractive concept to achieve clean and high efficiency combustion. RCCI can be realized by applying two fuels with different reactivities, e.g., diesel and gasoline. This motivates the idea of using a single low reactivity fuel and direct injection (DI) of the same fuel blended with a small amount of cetane improver to achieve RCCI combustion. In the current study, numerical investigation was conducted to simulate RCCI and HCCI combustion and emissions with various fuels, including gasoline/diesel, iso-butanol/diesel and iso-butanol/iso-butanol+di-tert-butyl peroxide (DTBP) cetane improver. A reduced Primary Reference Fuel (PRF)-iso-butanol-DTBP mechanism was formulated and coupled with the KIVA computational fluid dynamic (CFD) code to predict the combustion and emissions of these fuels under different operating conditions in a heavy duty diesel engine.

This work concerns the oxidation of biodiesel surrogates in a CI engine. An experimental study has been carried out in a single-cylinder common-rail CI engine with soybean biodiesel and two biodiesel surrogates containing neat methyl decanoate and methyl decanoate/n-heptane blends. Tests have been conducted with various intake oxygen concentrations ranging from 21% to approximately 9% at intake temperatures of 25°C and 50°C. The results showed that the ignition delay and smoke emissions of neat methyl decanoate were closer to that of soybean biodiesel as compared with methyl decanoate/n-heptane blends. A reduced chemical kinetic mechanism for the oxidation of methyl decanoate has been developed and applied to model internal combustion engines. A KIVA code, coupled with the Chemkin chemistry solver, was used as the computational platforms. The effects of various intake oxygen concentrations on the in-cylinder emissions of OH and soot were discussed.

This paper describes numerical simulations that compare the performance of two combustion CFD models against experimental data, and evaluates the effects of combustion and spray model constants on the predicted combustion and emissions under various operating conditions. The combustion models include a Characteristic Time Combustion (CTC) model and CHEMKIN with reduced chemistry models integrated in the KIVA-3Vr2 CFD code. The diesel spray process was modeled using an updated version of the KH-RT spray model that features a gas jet submodel to help reduce numerical grid dependencies, and the effects of both the spray and combustion model constants on combustion and emissions were evaluated. In addition, the performance of two soot models was compared, namely a two-step soot model, and a more detailed model that considers soot formation from PAH precursors.

A very competitive alcohol for use in diesel engines is butanol. Butanol is of particular interest as a renewable bio-fuel, as it is less hydrophilic and it possesses higher heating value, higher cetane number, lower vapor pressure, and higher miscibility than ethanol or methanol. These properties make butanol preferable to ethanol or methanol for blending with conventional diesel or gasoline fuel. In this paper, the spray and combustion characteristics of pure n-butanol fuel was experimentally investigated in a constant volume combustion chamber. The ambient temperatures were set to 1000 K, and three different oxygen concentrations were set to 21%, 16%, and 10.5%. The results indicate that the penetration length reduces with the increase of ambient oxygen concentration. The combustion pressure and heat release rate demonstrate the auto-ignition delay becomes longer with decreasing of oxygen concentrations.

A fully coupled multi-dimensional CFD and reduced chemical kinetics model is adopted to investigate the effects of charge stratification on HCCI combustion and emissions. Seven different kinds of imposed stratification have been introduced according to the position of the maximal local fuel/air equivalence ratio in the cylinder at intake valve close. The results show that: The charge stratification results in stratification of the in-cylinder temperature. The former four kinds of stratification, whose maximal local equivalence ratios at intake valve close locate between the cylinder center and half of the cylinder radius, advance ignition timing, reduce the pressure-rise rate, and retard combustion-phasing. But the following three kinds of stratification, whose maximal local equivalence ratios at intake valve close appear between half of the cylinder radius and the cylinder wall, have little effect on the cylinder pressure.

The effects of various injection timing of methanol on thermo-atmosphere combustion of methanol by port injection of dimethyl ether (DME) and direct injection of methanol were experimentally investigated. The experiment results show that, as injection timing is at 6 degree before TDC, the combustion process comprises three stages: low temperature heat release of DME, high temperature heat release of DME and diffusion combustion of methanol. As injection timing increases, premixed combustion proportion of methanol is increased and diffusion combustion proportion is decreased. As injection timing increases to 126 degree before TDC, diffusion combustion of methanol disappears. At this time, the combustion process shows typical two stages heat release of HCCI combustion. As injection timing increases, required DME rate is increased, combustion efficiency and indicated thermal efficiency all first increase and then decrease.

The effects of cooled EGR on combustion and emission characteristics in HCCI operation region was investigated on a single-cylinder diesel engine, which is fitted with port injection of DME and methanol. The results indicate that EGR rate can enlarge controlled HCCI operating region, but it has little effect on the maximum load of HCCI engine fuelled with DME/methanol dual-fuels. With the increase of EGR rate, the main combustion ignition timing (MCIT) delays, the main combustion duration (MCD) prolongs, and the peak cylinder pressure and the peak rate of heat release decreases. Compared with EGR, DME percentage has an opposite effect on HCCI combustion characteristics. The increase of indicated thermal efficiency is a combined effect of EGR rate and DME percentage. Both HC and CO emissions ascend with EGR rate increasing, and decrease with DME percentage increasing. In normal combustion, NOX emissions are near zero.

The effects of Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) and octane number of PRF fuel on combustion and emission characteristics in HCCI operation were investigated. The results show that EGR could delay the ignition timing, slow down the combustion reaction rate, reduce the pressure and average temperature in cylinder and extend the operation region into large load mode. With the increase of the fuel/air equivalence ratio or the fuel octane number (ON), the effect of EGR on combustion efficiency improves. With the increase of EGR rate, the combustion efficiency decreases. The optimum indicated thermal efficiency of different octane number fuels appears in the region of high EGR rate and large fuel/air equivalence ratio, which is next to the boundary of knocking. In the region of high EGR rate, HC emissions rise up sharply as the EGR rate increases. With the increase of octane number, this tendency becomes more obvious.

By mixing iso-octane with octane number 100 and normal heptane with octane number 0, it was possible to obtain a PRF fuel with octane rating between 0 and 100. The influence of PRF fuel’s octane number on the combustion characteristics, performance and emissions character of homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) engine was investigated. The experiments were carried out in a single cylinder direct injection diesel engine. The test results show that, with the increase of the octane number, the ignition timing delayed, the combustion rate decreased, and the cylinder pressure decreased. The HCCI combustion can be controlled and then extending the HCCI operating range by burning different octane number fuel at different engine mode, which engine burns low octane number fuel at low load mode and large octane number fuel at large load mode. There exists an optimum octane number that achieves the highest indicated thermal efficiency at different engine load.

Homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) is considered as a high efficient and clean combustion technology for I.C. engines. Methanol is a potential fuel for HCCI combustion. In this research, a single cylinder diesel engine was applied to HCCI operation. Methanol and dimethyl ether (DME) were fueled to the engine by fuel injection system with an electric controlled port in dual fuel mode. The results show that the stable HCCI operation of DME/methanol can be obtained over a quite broad speed and load region. And compared with higher speeds, the load region is even wider at low engine speed. E.g., at the engine speed of 1000 r/min, the maximum indicated mean effective pressure(IMEP) can reach 0.77 MPa, while at 2000r/min it is 0.53 MPa. Both DME and methanol influence HCCI combustion strongly, and by regulating DME/methanol proportions the HCCI combustion process could be controlled effectively.

A yc6112ZLQ turbocharged 6 cylinder engine with intercooler was converted to operate in dual fuel mode with compressed natural gas (CNG) and pilot diesel. The influence of the CNG ratio, pilot diesel injection advance (ADC) and intake temperature after intercooler on the combustion process, emissions and engine performance was investigated. The results show that the combustion process of dual-fuel engines is faster than diesel engine. Both the ignition timing of the pilot fuel and the excess air ratio of total fuel λ dominate the combustion characteristics of duel-fuel engines. With the increase of CNG ratio, the pressure and temperature in cylinder decrease at rated mode, but increase at torque and low speed modes. With advanced the pilot injection timing or increased the intake temperature, the cylinder pressure and temperature increase.