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In this study, a 1.1 MW diesel-gen-set is used to design a Waste Heat Recovery (WHR) system to generate additional power using Rankine cycle (RC). A computer code is written in commercial Engineering Equation Solver (EES) software to solve equations of overall energy and mass balance, heat transfer, evaporation, condensation, frictional and heat losses for heat exchangers, turbine, pumps, cooling tower and connecting pipes connecting different components. After initial design of the WHR system, manufacturers are contacted to find out the availability of parts, and then, accordingly the design is changed. There are several heat exchangers required to heat the water from liquid to superheated steam and then, it is passed to the turbine. Then, after the expansion in the turbine, it is passed to the condenser to condense the steam to water. Optimization is done on the heat exchangers, focusing on the tube length and diameter.

In this study, a computer model of the four-stroke, spark-ignition natural gas engine thermodynamic cycle was developed. This model was constructed based on the mass and energy conservation principles and the combustion process was analyzed using a two-zone combustion model. The combustion angle was calculated by using relationships derived from a turbulent model. In addition, a kinetic model based on the extended Zeldovich mechanism was developed in order to show the ability of Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) on reducing NO emissions. Furthermore, a knocking model was incorporated with the two-zone combustion model in order to predict any auto-ignition that might occur. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of adding EGR to a stoichiometric mixture on engine performance and NO emissions under several inlet conditions.

In general, diesel engines have an efficiency of about 35% and hence, a considerable amount of energy is expelled to the ambient air. In water-cooled engines, about 25%, 33% and 7% of the input energy are wasted in the coolant, exhaust gas, and friction, respectively. The heat from the exhaust gas of diesel engines can be an important heat source to provide additional power and improve overall engine efficiency. Studies related to the application of recoverable heat to produce additional power in medium capacity diesel engines (< 100 kW) using separate Rankine cycle are scarce. To recover heat from the exhaust of the engine, an efficient heat exchanger is necessary. For this type of application, the heat exchangers are needed to be designed in such a way that it can handle the heat load with reasonable size, weight and pressure drop. This paper describes the study of a diesel generator-set attached with an exhaust heat recovery system.

Diesel engine can be run with biodiesel which has the potential to supplement the receding supply of crude oil. As biodiesel possess similar physiochemical properties to diesel, most diesel engines can run with biodiesel with minimum modifications. However, the viscosity of biodiesel is higher, and the calorific value is lower than diesel. Therefore, when biodiesel is used in diesel engines, it is usually blended with diesel at different proportions. Use of 100% biodiesel in diesel engines shows inferior performance of having lower power and torque. Improving in-cylinder airflow characteristic to break down higher viscous biodiesel and to improve air-fuel mixing are the aims of this research. Therefore, guide vanes in the intake runner were used in this research to improve the performance of diesel engine run with biodiesel.

Exhaust gases from diesel engines can be an adequate source of energy to run a bottoming Rankine cycle to increase the overall efficiency of the engine as it contains a significant portion of input energy. In this research, an automotive diesel engine was tested to estimate the available energy in the exhaust gas. Shell and tube heat exchangers were used to extract the heat from the exhaust gas and the performance of the two shell and tube heat exchangers were investigated with parallel and counter flow arrangements using water as the working fluid. The results obtained were below satisfactory as these heat exchangers were purchased from the marketplace and not optimized for this particular application. Thus attempts were made to optimize the design of the heat exchanger by computer simulation using the available experimental data.

Due to depletion of crude oil and exhaust emissions associated with internal combustion engine, biodiesel, neat vegetable oil and waste cooking oil are identified as potential alternative fuels to run on diesel engines. However, the viscosities of these fuels are higher than diesel and can be grouped as higher viscous fuel (HVF). Currently, diesel engines fuelled by HVF experience problems of reduced power and torque besides increased fuel consumption and in-cylinder carbon deposit. These are mainly due to poor combustion as HVF is less prone to evaporate and mix with air. To reduce these problems, a technique to improve the air-fuel mixing in diesel engine fuelled by HVF using Guide Vane Swirl and Tumble Device (GVSTD) is presented in this paper. Validated simulation model for a diesel engine was developed using Solidworks and ANSYS-CFX before 12 GVSTD models were imposed in front of the intake runner with the vane twist angle varied from 3° to 60°.

This paper focuses on waste heat recovery (WHR) system, which is an efficient technology to reduce fuel and vehicle carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per kW of power produced. Wide variations of power of a vehicle make it difficult to design a WHR system which can operate optimally at all powers. The exhaust temperature from the engine is critical to design a WHR system. Higher the temperature higher will be the gain from the WHR system. However, as power drops the exhaust temperature drops which makes the WHR system perform poorly at lower powers. In this research, a small diesel truck engine was used to design a WHR system to produce additional power using a Rankine cycle (RC). The WHR system was designed at the rated power and speed of 42.8 kW and 2600 rpm, respectively. At this design point, around 15% additional power improvement was achieved resulting around 13% break specific fuel consumption reduction.

The heat from the exhaust gas of diesel engines can be an important heat source to provide additional power using a separate Rankine Cycle (RC) or an Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC). Water is the best working fluid for this type of applications in terms of efficiency of the RC system, availability and environmental friendliness. However, for small engines and also at part load operations, the exhaust gas temperature is not sufficient enough to heat the steam to be in superheated zone, which after expansion in the turbine needs to be in superheated zone. Ammonia was found to be an alternate working fluid for these types of applications which can run at low exhaust temperatures. Computer simulation was carried out with an optimized heat exchanger to estimate additional power with water and ammonia as the working fluids. ANSYS 14.0 CFX software was used for the simulation.

The performance of a compression ignition (CI) engine run with alternative fuel is inferior to when it is run with petro-diesel resulting in lower power, higher fuel consumption and higher carbon deposits. This is due to the poorer properties of the alternative fuel for the CI engine compared to petro-diesel, for instance, higher viscosity. Due to this factor, this research has grouped these fuels as higher viscous fuels (HVFs). In order to solve or reduce the problem of higher viscosity, this paper presents research that has sought to improve the in-cylinder airflow characteristics by using a guide vane so that the evaporation, diffusion, mixing and combustion processes can be stimulated eventually improving or at least reducing the problem. The in-cylinder airflow was studied using ANSYS-CFX with the help of SolidWorks. Firstly, the validated base model replicated from the generator of a CI engine was prepared.

The waste heat recovery (WHR) system appears to lower overall fuel consumption of the engine by producing additional power and curtailing greenhouse emissions per unit of power produced. In this project, a 25.5 kW diesel engine is used and simulated, which has an exhaust temperature of about 470°C. During optimization of the heat exchangers, the overall weight of the heat exchangers is kept low to reduce the final cost. Additionally, the overall pressure drops across the superheater, boiler, and economiser are kept at around 200 kPa to expel the exhaust gas into the atmosphere easily. To accomplish high heat-transfer across the heat exchangers, the pinch temperature of the hot and cold fluids is kept above 20°C. In this project, under the design constraints and available heat at the exhaust gases, the WHR system has enhanced the power and reduced the break specific fuel consumption by around 6.2% and 5.8%, respectively at 40 bar pressure.

To comply with the new Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, automakers are expected to increase the average fuel economy of their vehicles to 54.5 miles per gallon from the current 24.8 miles per gallon by 2025. This research aims at proposing a feasible solution to narrow down the gap between the current and expected fuel economy of the vehicles, yet maintaining the engine’s original performance. A standard model of the KTM 510 cc single cylinder, fuel injected, internal combustion engine (IC) engine is modelled and simulated in Ricardo Wave software package to map the stock engine performance and specific fuel consumption at wide open throttle (WOT). The baseline simulation model is validated against the experimental readings with 98% accuracy.