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The autoignition resistance of a practical gasoline is best characterized by the Octane Index, OI, defined as RON-KS, where RON and MON are respectively, Research and Motor Octane Numbers, S is the sensitivity (RON-MON) and K is a constant depending on the pressure and temperature history of the fuel/air mixture in an engine. Experiments in knocking SI engines, HCCI engines and in premixed compression ignition (PCI) engines have shown that if two fuels of different composition have the same OI and experience the same pressure/temperature history, they will have the same autoignition phasing. A practical gasoline is a complex mixture of hydrocarbons and a simple surrogate is needed to describe its autoignition chemistry. A mixture of toluene and PRF (iso-octane + n-heptane), TPRF, can have the same RON and S as a target gasoline and so will have the same OI at any given K value and will be a very good surrogate for the gasoline.

Isobaric combustion has shown the potential of improving engine efficiency by lowering the heat transfer losses. Previous studies have achieved isobaric combustion through multiple injections from a single central injector, controlling injection timing and duration of the injection. In this study, we employed three injectors, i.e. one centrally mounted (C) on the cylinder head and two side-injectors (S), slant-mounted on cylinder head protruding their nozzle tip near piston-bowl to achieve the isobaric combustion. This study visualized the flame development of isobaric combustion, linking flow-field details to the observed trends in engine efficiency and soot emissions. The experiments were conducted in an optically accessible single-cylinder heavy-duty diesel engine using n-heptane as fuel. Isobaric combustion, with a 50 bar peak pressure, was achieved with three different injection strategies, i.e. (C+S), (S+C), and (S+S).

The high-pressure isobaric combustion has been proposed as the most suitable combustion mode for the double compre4ssion expansion engine (DCEE) concept. Previous experimental and simulation studies have demonstrated an improved efficiency compared to the conventional diesel combustion (CDC) engine. In the current study, isobaric combustion was achieved using a single injector with multiple injections. Since this concept involves complex phenomena such as spray to spray interactions, the computational models were extensively validated against the optical engine experiment data, to ensure high-fidelity simulations. The considered optical diagnostic techniques are Mie-scattering, fuel tracer planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF), and natural flame luminosity imaging. Overall, a good agreement between the numerical and experimental results was obtained.

Isobaric combustion has demonstrated a great potential to reach high thermodynamic efficiency in the advanced Double Compression Expansion Engine (DCEE) concept. It appears as one of few viable choices for applications with high-pressure combustion. At these conditions, releasing heat at a constant pressure minimizes the peak in-cylinder pressure and, hence, mitigates excessive mechanical stress on the engine. This study focuses on the effect of fuels on the multiple-injection isobaric combustion. A single-cylinder heavy-duty engine was utilized to test and compare the isobaric combustion with pure isooctane and n-heptane fuels. The engine was equipped with an optical piston to allow a bottom-view of the combustion chamber. The interactions of multiple injections and the combustion behavior were studied using high-speed acquisition of chemiluminescence. The examined isobaric cases have a peak pressure of 70 bar.

The improvement of the indicated thermal efficiency of an argon power cycle (replacing nitrogen with argon in the combustion reaction) is investigated in a CFR engine at high compression ratios in homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) mode. The study combines the two effects that can increase the thermodynamic efficiency as predicted by the ideal Otto cycle: high specific heat ratio (provided by argon), and high compression ratios. However, since argon has relatively low heat capacity (at constant volume), it results in high in-cylinder temperatures, which in turn, leads to the occurrence of knock. Knock limits the feasible range of compression ratios and further increasing the compression ratio can cause serious damage to the engine due to the high pressure rise rate caused by advancing the combustion phasing.

In order to understand supercritical jet flows further, well resolved large eddy simulations (LES) of a n-dodecane jet mixing with surrounding nitrogen are conducted. A real fluid thermodynamic model is used to account for the fuel compressibility and variable thermophysical properties due to the solubility of ambient gas and liquid jet using the cubic Peng-Robinson equation of state (PR-EOS). A molar averaged homogeneous mixing rule is used to calculate the mixing properties. The thermodynamic model is coupled with a pressure-based solver to simulate multispecies reacting flows. The numerical model is based on a second order accurate method implemented in the open source OpenFOAM-6 software. First, to evaluate the present numerical model for sprays, 1D advection and shock tube benchmark problems at supercritical conditions are shown.

Pre-chamber ignition systems are considered as an effective technique to achieve an ultra-lean burn combustion. Hot combustion products and flames generated from pre-chamber combustion create high-speed turbulent jets, which ignite an ultra-lean mixture in the main chamber. This turbulent ignition can be classified as a jet and flame ignition process with thermal and chemical kinetic effects imposed on the main chamber by the pre-chamber. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the chemical effects of pre-chamber combustion products on main chamber ignition performance over a range of operating conditions in pre-chamber. A zero-dimensional pre-chamber combustion model was developed using CHEMKIN-PRO software. By varying the equivalence ratio of reactants, simulation results indicated that the pre-chamber generated more active radicals when burning around stoichiometric conditions but more low-carbon species when burning in rich conditions.

Engine knock is an abnormal phenomenon, which places barriers for modern Spark-Ignition (SI) engines to achieve higher thermal efficiency and better performance. In order to trigger more controllable knock events for study while keeping the knock intensity at restricted range, various spark strategies (e.g. spark timing, spark number, spark location) are applied to investigate on their influences on knock combustion characteristics and pressure oscillations. The experiment is implemented on a modified single cylinder Compression-Ignition (CI) engine operated at SI mode with port fuel injection (PFI). A specialized liner with 4 side spark plugs and 4 pressure sensors is used to generate various flame propagation processes, which leads to different auto-ignition onsets and knock development. Based on multiple channels of pressure signals, a band-pass filter is applied to obtain the pressure oscillations with respect to different spark strategies.

Pre-chamber combustion (PCC) is a promising engine combustion concept capable of extending the lean limit at part load. The engine experiments in the literature showed that the PCC could achieve higher engine thermal efficiency and much lower NOx emission than the spark-ignition engine. Improved understanding of the detailed flow and combustion physics of PCC is important for optimizing the PCC combustion. In this study, we investigated the gas exchange and flame jet from a narrow throat pre-chamber (PC) by only fueling the PC with methane in an optical engine. Simultaneous negative acetone planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) imaging and OH* chemiluminescence imaging were applied to visualize the PC jet and flame jet from the PC, respectively. Results indicate a delay of the PC gas exchange relative to the built-up of the pressure difference (△ P) between PC and the main chamber (MC). This should be due to the gas inertia inside the PC and the resistance of the PC nozzle.

Pre-chamber combustion (PCC) allows an extension on the lean limit of an internal combustion engine (ICE). This combustion mode provides lower NOx emissions and shorter combustion durations that lead to a higher indicated efficiency. In the present work, a narrow throat pre-chamber was tested, which has a unique nozzle area distribution in two rows of six nozzle holes each. Tests were carried out in a modified heavy-duty engine for optical visualization. Methane was used as fuel for both the pre-chamber and the main chamber. Seven operating points were tested, including passive pre-chamber mode as a limit condition, to study the effect of pre- and main-chamber fuel addition on the pre-chamber jets and the main chamber combustion via chemiluminescence imaging. A typical cycle of one of the tested conditions is explained through the captured images. Observations of the typical cycle reveal a predominant presence of only six jets (from the lower row), with well-defined jet structures.

The utilization of H2 to catalytically treat NO emissions under lean-burn engine exhaust conditions was studied on Pt- and Pd-containing catalysts supported on CeO2 and MgO. The catalytic performance was examined using a fixed-bed reactor whose dry effluent gas stream was analyzed by an online FTIR analyzer. The catalysts NO conversion and N2 selectivity were measured in the range of 125-3000C with a feed gas composition of 0.05%NO/1%H2/10%O2/N2. The CeO2-based catalysts exhibited higher NO conversion, and the most effective catalyst was Pd/CeO2, with a conversion of 67% and selectivity of 70% near 2300C. The prepared solids were characterized using different techniques (BET, ICP-OES, CO pulse chemisorption, STEM, EELS and EDS) to correlate the structural and morphological properties of the metallic phase and the support with the catalytic activity. CeO2 is a more effective support as it yields higher metal dispersion and better facilitates the reduction of the Pt and Pd catalysts.

The regulatory requirements to reduce both greenhouse gases and exhaust gas pollutants from heavy duty engines are driving new perspectives on the interaction between fuels and engines. Fuels that reliefs the burden on engine manufacturers to reach these goals are of particular interest. A low carbon fuel with a higher volatility and heating value than diesel is one such fuel that reduces engine-out emissions and carbon footprint from the entire hydrocarbon lifecycle (well-to-wheel) and improves fuel efficiency, which is a main enabler for gasoline compression ignition (GCI) technology. The present study investigated the potential of GCI technology by evaluating the performance of a low carbon high efficiency, high reactivity gasoline fuel in Doosan’s 6L medium duty diesel engine.

In this study, the combustion system of a light-duty compression ignition engine running on a market gasoline fuel with Research Octane Number (RON) of 91 was optimized using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and Machine Learning (ML). This work was focused on optimizing the piston bowl geometry at two compression ratios (CR) (17 and 18:1) and this exercise was carried out at full-load conditions (20 bar indicated mean effective pressure, IMEP). First, a limited manual piston design optimization was performed for CR 17:1, where a couple of pistons were designed and tested. Thereafter, a CFD design of experiments (DoE) optimization was performed where CAESES, a commercial software tool, was used to automatically perturb key bowl design parameters and CONVERGE software was utilized to perform the CFD simulations. At each compression ratio, 128 piston bowl designs were evaluated.

The auto-ignition of liquid fuel and lubricant oil droplets is considered as one of the possible sources of pre-ignition. Researchers are continually finding new ways to form advanced lubricant oil by changing its composition and varying different oil additives to prevent the occurrence of this event. This study investigates additives for lubricants to suppress its auto-ignition tendency. Three sets of mixtures were prepared. The first set of mixtures were prepared by adding different alcohols namely ethanol, and methanol to the commercial lubricant oil (SAE 15W-40) in ratio of 1 - 5 % by vol The second set of mixtures were prepared by mixing SAE 15W-40 with aforementioned alcohols (1 % vol.) and H2O (1 % vol.). Lastly, the third set of mixtures were prepared by adding toluene to SAE 15W-40 in (1 % - 5% by vol.). Two experimental setups were used in the current work.

The increasing demand for high-octane fuels is pushing the combustion research towards investigating new potential fuels and octane boosters. In addition to their high-octane, those additives should be environmentally friendly. In this study, the anti-knock properties of Dicyclopentadiene (DCPD) as an additive to primary reference fuels (PRF) and toluene primary reference fuels (TPRF) have been investigated. The Research octane number (RON) and Motor octane number (MON) were measured using Cooperative Fuels Research (CFR) engine for four different fuel blends; PRF 60 + 10% DCPD, PRF 60 + 20% DCPD, PRF 70 + 10% DCPD and TPRF 70 + 10% DCPD. In addition, homogenous charge compression ignition (HCCI) was also performed using the CFR engine to show the effect of DCPD on suppressing low temperature chemistry of reference fuels.

Researchers have known about a higher pre-ignition frequency of alcohol fuels for several decades now. Several studies, assessing the effect of ethanol addition on stochastic pre-ignition, have shown contradicting observations. Researchers at FEV observed an increase in pre-ignition frequency with an increase in ethanol concentration, however the pre-ignition events at high ethanol content did not lead to super-knock. Most of the studies have used varying ethanol fraction in a common base-fuel, thereby varying the auto-ignition tendency of the blend. In the current study, the effect of ethanol addition on FACE (Fuels for Advanced Combustion Engines) gasolines is assessed. Five different FACE gasolines (FACE A, C, I, J and G) were used for the study. Ignition delay time of varying ethanol fractions in FACE gasolines was measured in an Ignition Quality Tester (IQT), following ASTM 6890.

The focus of this study is to aid the development of the isobaric combustion engine by investigating multiple injection strategies at moderately high pressures. A three-dimensional (3D) commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code, CONVERGE, was used to conduct simulations. The validation of the isobaric combustion case was carried out through the use of a single injector with multiple injections. The computational simulations were matched to the experimental data using methods outlined in this paper for different multiple injection cases. A sensitivity analysis to understand the effects of different modeling components on the quantitative prediction was carried out. First, the effects of the kinetic mechanisms were assessed by employing different chemical mechanisms, and the results showed no significant difference in the conditions under consideration.

Towards a fundamental understanding of the ignition characteristics of pre-chamber (PC) combustion engines, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations were conducted using CONVERGE. To assist the initial design of the KAUST pre-chamber engine experiments, the primary focus of the present study was to assess the impact of design parameters such as throat diameter, nozzle diameter, and nozzle length. The well-stirred reactor combustion model coupled with a methane oxidation mechanism reduced from GRI 3.0 was used. A homogeneous charge of methane and air with λ = 1.3 on both the PC and main chamber (MC) was assumed. The geometrical parameters were shown to affect the pre-chamber combustion characteristics, such as pressure build-up, radical formation, and heat release as well as the composition of the jets penetrating and igniting the main chamber charge. In addition, the backflow of species pushed inside the pre-chamber due to the flow reversal (FR) event was analyzed.

To provide insights into the fundamental characteristics of pre-chamber combustion engines, the ignition of lean premixed CH4/air due to hot gas jets initiated by a passive narrow throated pre-chamber in a heavy-duty engine was studied computationally. A twelve-hole pre-chamber geometry was investigated using CONVERGETM software. The numerical model was validated against the experimental results. To elucidate the main-chamber ignition mechanism, the spark plug location and spark timing were varied, resulting in different pressure gradient during turbulent jet formation. Different ignition mechanisms were observed for turbulent jet ignition of lean premixed CH4/air, based on the geometry effect. Ignition behavior was classified into the flame and jet ignition depending on the significant presence of hot active radicals. The jet ignition, mainly due to hot product gases was found to be advanced by the addition of a small concentration of radicals.

Pre-chamber spark ignition (PCSI) combustion is an emerging lean-burn combustion mode capable of extending the lean operation limit of an engine. The favorable characteristic of short combustion duration at the lean condition of PCSI results in high efficiencies compared to conventional spark ignition combustion. Since the engine operation is typically lean, PCSI can significantly reduce engine-out NOx emissions while maintaining short combustion durations. In this study, experiments were conducted on a heavy-duty engine at lean conditions at mid to low load. Two major studies were performed. In the first study, the total fuel energy input to the engine was fixed while the intake pressure was varied, resulting in varying the global excess air ratio. In the second study, the intake pressure was fixed while the amount of fuel was changed to alter the global excess air ratio.