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Measurements of the soot emissions and engine operating parameters from a diesel engine during transient operation were used to investigate the influence of transient operation on the soot emissions, as well as to validate a realtime mean value soot model (MVSM, [1]) for transient operation. To maximize the temporal resolution of the soot emission and engine parameter measurements (in particular EGR), fast instruments were used and their dynamic responses characterized and corrected. During tip-in transients, an increase in the soot emissions was observed due to a short term oxygen deficit compared to steady-state operation. No significant difference was seen between steady-state and transient operation for acceleration transients. When the MVSM was provided with inputs of sufficient temporal resolution, it was capable of reproducing the qualitative and, in part, quantitative soot emission trends.

The present experimental engine efficiency study explores the effects of intake pressure and temperature, and premixed and global equivalence ratios on gross thermal efficiency (GTE) using the reactivity controlled compression ignition (RCCI) combustion strategy. Experiments were conducted in a heavy-duty single-cylinder engine at constant net load (IMEPn) of 8.45 bar, 1300 rev/min engine speed, with 0% EGR, and a 50% mass fraction burned combustion phasing (CA50) of 0.5°CA ATDC. The engine was port fueled with E85 for the low reactivity fuel and direct injected with 3.5% 2-ethylhexyl nitrate (EHN) doped into 91 anti-knock index (AKI) gasoline for the high-reactivity fuel. The resulting reactivity of the enhanced fuel corresponds to an AKI of approximately 56 and a cetane number of approximately 28. The engine was operated with a wide range of intake pressures and temperatures, and the ratio of low- to high-reactivity fuel was adjusted to maintain a fixed speed-phasing-load condition.

Reactivity Controlled Compression Ignition (RCCI) is an engine combustion strategy that utilizes in-cylinder fuel blending to produce low NOx and PM emissions while maintaining high thermal efficiency. The current study investigates RCCI and conventional diesel combustion (CDC) operation in a light-duty multi-cylinder engine over transient operating conditions using a high-bandwidth, transient capable engine test cell. Transient RCCI and CDC combustion and emissions results are compared over an up-speed change from 1,000 to 2,000 rev/min. and a down-speed change from 2,000 to 1,000 rev/min. at a constant 2.0 bar BMEP load. The engine experiments consisted of in-cylinder fuel blending with port fuel-injection (PFI) of gasoline and early-cycle, direct-injection (DI) of ultra-low sulfur diesel (ULSD) for the RCCI tests and the same ULSD for the CDC tests.

The transient response of an engine with both High Pressure (HP) and Low Pressure (LP) EGR loops was compared by conducting step changes in EGR fraction at a constant engine speed and load. The HP EGR loop performance was shown to be closely linked to turbocharger performance, whereas the LP EGR loop was relatively independent of turbocharger performance and vice versa. The same experiment was repeated with the variable geometry turbine vanes completely open to reduce turbocharger action and achieve similar EGR rate changes with the HP and LP EGR loops. Under these conditions, the increased loop volume of the LP EGR loop prolonged the response of intake O2 concentration following the change in air-fuel ratio. The prolonged change of intake O2 concentration caused emissions to require more time to reach steady state as well. Strong coupling between the HP EGR loop and turbochargers was again observed using a hybrid EGR strategy.

The tradeoff between NOx emissions and combustion instability in an engine operating in the dual-fuel Reactivity Controlled Compression Ignition (RCCI) combustion mode was investigated using a combination of engine experiments and detailed CFD modeling. Experiments were performed on a single cylinder version of a General Motors/Fiat JTD 1.9L four-cylinder diesel engine. Gasoline was injected far upstream of the intake valve using an air assisted injector and fuel vaporization system and diesel was injected directly into the cylinder using a common rail injector. The timing of the diesel injection was swept from −70° ATDC to −20° ATDC while the gasoline percentage was adjusted to hold the average combustion phasing (CA50) and load (IMEPg) constant at 0.5° ATDC and 7 bar, respectively. At each operating point the variation in IMEP, peak PRR, and CA50 was calculated from the measured cylinder pressure trace and NOx, CO, soot and UHC were recorded.

Control of the timing and magnitude of heat release is one of the biggest challenges for premixed compression ignition, especially when attempting to operate at high load. Single-fuel strategies such as partially premixed combustion (PPC) use direct injection of gasoline to stratify equivalence ratio and retard heat release, thereby reducing pressure rise rate and enabling high load operation. However, retarding the heat release also reduces the maximum work extraction, effectively creating a tradeoff between efficiency and noise. Dual-fuel strategies such as reactivity controlled compression ignition (RCCI) use premixed gasoline and direct injection of diesel to stratify both equivalence ratio and fuel reactivity, which allows for greater control over the timing and duration of heat release. This enables combustion phasing closer to top dead center (TDC), which is thermodynamically favorable.

The focus of the present study was to characterize Reactivity Controlled Compression Ignition (RCCI) using a single-fuel approach of gasoline and gasoline mixed with a commercially available cetane improver on a multi-cylinder engine. RCCI was achieved by port-injecting a certification grade 96 research octane gasoline and direct-injecting the same gasoline mixed with various levels of a cetane improver, 2-ethylhexyl nitrate (EHN). The EHN volume percentages investigated in the direct-injected fuel were 10, 5, and 2.5%. The combustion phasing controllability and emissions of the different fueling combinations were characterized at 2300 rpm and 4.2 bar brake mean effective pressure over a variety of parametric investigations including direct injection timing, premixed gasoline percentage, and intake temperature. Comparisons were made to gasoline/diesel RCCI operation on the same engine platform at nominally the same operating condition.

This study investigates n-dodecane split injections of “Spray A” from the Engine Combustion Network (ECN) using two different turbulence treatments (RANS and LES) in conjunction with a Conditional Moment Closure combustion model (CMC). The two modeling approaches are first assessed in terms of vapor spray penetration evolutions of non-reacting split injections showing a clearly superior performance of the LES compared to RANS: while the former successfully reproduces the experimental results for both first and second injection events, the slipstream effect in the wake of the first injection jet is not accurately captured by RANS leading to an over-predicted spray tip penetration of the second pulse. In a second step, two reactive operating conditions with the same ambient density were investigated, namely one at a diesel-like condition (900K, 60bar) and one at a lower temperature (750K, 50bar).

A correlation was developed to predict the ignition delay of PRF blends at a wide range of engine-relevant operating conditions. Constant volume simulations were performed using Cantera coupled with a reduced reaction mechanism at a range of initial temperatures from 570-1860K, initial pressures from 10-100atm, oxygen mole percent from 12.6% to 21%, equivalence ratios from 0.30-1.5, and PRF blends from PRF0 to PRF100. In total, 6,480 independent ignition delay simulations were performed. The correlation utilizes the traditional Arrhenius formulation; with equivalence ratio (φ), pressure (p), and oxygen mole percentage (xo2) dependencies. The exponents α, β, and γ were fitted to a third order polynomial with respect to temperature with an exponential roll-off to a constant value at low temperatures to capture the behavior expressed by the reaction mechanism. The location and rate of the roll-off functions were modified by linear functions of PRF.

An existing three-stage ignition delay model which has seen successful application to Primary Reference Fuels (PRFs) has been extended to six surrogate fuels which constitute potential candidates for future Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) engines. The fuels include petroleum-derived and oxygenated components and can be divided into low, intermediate and high cetane number groups. A new methodology to obtain the model parameters is presented which relies jointly on simulation and experimental data: in a first step, constant volume adiabatic reactor simulations using chemical kinetic mechanisms are performed to generate ignition delays for a very wide range of conditions, namely variations in equivalence ratio, Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR), pressure and temperature.

The 4th Workshop of the Engine Combustion Network (ECN) was held September 5-6, 2015 in Kyoto, Japan. This manuscript presents a summary of the progress in experiments and modeling among ECN contributors leading to a better understanding of soot formation under the ECN “Spray A” configuration and some parametric variants. Relevant published and unpublished work from prior ECN workshops is reviewed. Experiments measuring soot particle size and morphology, soot volume fraction (fv), and transient soot mass have been conducted at various international institutions providing target data for improvements to computational models. Multiple modeling contributions using both the Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) Equations approach and the Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) approach have been submitted. Among these, various chemical mechanisms, soot models, and turbulence-chemistry interaction (TCI) methodologies have been considered.

Low-temperature combustion (LTC) strategies have been an active area of research due to their ability to achieve high thermal efficiency while avoiding the formation of NOx and particulate matter. One of the largest challenges with LTC is the relative lack of authority over the heat release rate profile, which, depending on the particular injection strategy, either limits the maximum attainable load, or creates a tradeoff between noise and efficiency at high load conditions. We have shown previously that control over heat release can be dramatically improved through a combination of reactivity stratification in the premixed charge and a diffusion-limited injection that occurs after the conclusion of the low-temperature heat release, in a strategy called direct dual fuel stratification (DDFS).

Cycle-to-cycle variations in internal combustion engines are known to lead to limitations in engine load and efficiency, as well as increases in emissions. Recent research has led to the identification of the source of cyclic variations of pressure, soot and NO emissions in direct injection common rail diesel engines, when employing a single block injection and operating under long ignition delay conditions. The variations in peak pressure arise from changes in the diffusion combustion rate, caused by randomly occurring in-cylinder pressure fluctuations. These fluctuations result from the excitation of the first radial mode of vibration of the cylinder gases which arises from the rapid premixed combustion after the long ignition delay period. Cycles with high-intensity fluctuations present faster diffusion combustion, resulting in higher cycle peak pressure, as well as higher measured exhaust NO concentrations.

The effect of direct-injected fuel on particle size distributions (PSDs) of particulate matter emitted from dual-fuel combustion strategies was investigated. The PSD data were acquired from a light-duty single-cylinder diesel engine operated using conventional diesel combustion (CDC) and two diesel/natural gas dual-fuel combustion strategies. Three different direct-injection (DI) fuels (diesel, 2,6,10-trimethyldodecane, and a primary reference fuel blend) and two different injector nozzles were studied. The DI fuels were chosen to have similar energy and ignition characteristics (heat of combustion and cetane number) but different physical and chemical properties (volatility, aromatics %, viscosity, density). The two nozzles (with different orifice diameter and spray angle) allowed a wide range in DI fuel quantity for the dual-fuel combustion strategies.

This work explores the effectiveness of common rail fuel injectors equipped with Grouped Hole Nozzles (GHNs) in aiding the mixing process and reducing particulate matter (PM) emissions of Conventional Diesel Combustion (CDC) engines, while maintaining manageable Oxides of Nitrogen (NOx) levels. Parallel (pGHN), converging (cGHN) and diverging (dGHN) - hole GHNs were studied and the results were compared to a conventional, single hole nozzle (SHN) with the same flow area. The study was conducted on a single cylinder medium-duty engine to isolate the effects of the combustion from multi-cylinder effects and the conditions were chosen to be representative of a typical mid-load operating point for an on-road diesel engine. The effects of injection pressure and the Start of Injection (SOI) timing were explored and the tradeoffs between these boundary conditions are examined by using a response surface fitting technique, to identify an optimum operating condition.

A computational, three-dimensional approach to investigate the behavior of diesel soot particles in the micro-channels of wall-flow Diesel Particulate Filters is presented. The KIVA3V CFD code, already extended to solve the 2D conservation equations for porous media materials [1], has been enhanced to solve in 2-D and 3-D the governing equations for reacting and compressible flows through porous media in non axes-symmetric geometries. With respect to previous work [1], a different mathematical approach has been followed in the implementation of the numerical solver for porous media, in order to achieve a faster convergency as source terms were added to the governing equations. The Darcy pressure drop has been included in the Navier-Stokes equations and the energy equation has been extended to account for the thermal exchange between the gas flow and the porous wall.

Deviations between transient and steady state operation of a modern light duty diesel engine were identified by comparing rapid load transitions to steady state tests at the same speeds and fueling rates. The validity of approximating transient performance by matching the transient charge air flow rate and intake manifold pressure at steady state was also assessed. Results indicate that for low load operation with low temperature combustion strategies, transient deviations of MAF and MAP from steady state values are small in magnitude or short in duration and have relatively little effect on transient engine performance. A new approximation accounting for variations in intake temperature and excess oxygen content of the EGR was more effective at capturing transient emissions trends, but significant differences in magnitudes remained in certain cases indicating that additional sources of variation between transient and steady state performance remain unaccounted for.

Engine experiments and multi-dimensional modeling were used to explore the effects of isobutanol as both the high and low reactivity fuels in Reactivity Controlled Compression Ignition (RCCI) Combustion. Three fuel combinations were examined; EEE/diesel, isobutanol/diesel, and isobutanol/isobutanol+DTBP (di-tert butyl peroxide). In order to assess the relative performance of the fuel combinations of interest under RCCI operation, the engine was operated under conditions representative of typical low temperature combustion (LTC). A net load of 6 bar indicated mean effective pressure (IMEP) was chosen because it provides a wide operable range of equivalence ratios and combustion phasings without excessively high peak pressure rise rates (PPRR). The engine was operated under various intake pressures with global equivalence ratios from 0.28-0.36, and various combustion phasings (defined by 50% mass fraction burned-CA50) from about 1.5 to about 10 deg after top dead center (ATDC).

Homogeneous low temperature combustion is believed to be a promising approach to resolve the conflict of goals between high efficiency and low exhaust emissions. Disadvantageously for this kind of combustion, the whole process depends on chemical kinetics and thus is hard to control. Reactivity controlled combustion can help to overcome this difficulty. In the so-called RCCI (reactivity controlled compression ignition) combustion concept a small amount of pilot diesel that is injected directly into the combustion chamber ignites a highly diluted gasoline-air mixture. As the gasoline does not ignite without the diesel, the pilot injection timing and the ratio between diesel and gasoline can be used to control the combustion process. A phenomenological multi-zone model to predict RCCI combustion has been developed and validated against experimental and 3D-CFD data. The model captures the main physics governing ignition and combustion.

This paper discusses the possibility of equipping Euro 3 and older vehicles with a universal retrofit kit to reduce the NOX and the PM emissions without producing any secondary effect. Out of several configurations, the optimal setup for EGR and DPF regeneration was evaluated and tested on a passenger car engine testbench. Stationary results showed that with a low pressure EGR it was possible to reduce the NOX emissions by more than 50%, and the filtration efficiency of the DPF was greater than 99%. After various dynamic tests on the test bench to improve the control algorithm, the system was designed to be installed on a garbage truck.