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The authors have explored the potential of fuel to control spray and its combustion processes in a diesel engine. Fuel has some potential for low emission and high thermal efficiency because its volatility and ignitability are one of the ultimate performing factors of the engines. In present study, the ignition process of mixed fuel spray was investigated in a constant volume combustion vessel and in a rapid compression and expansion machine, The ignition delay based on the diagram of rate of the heat release, the imaging of natural flame emissions and the numerical simulation were carried out to clarify the effect of the physical and chemical properties of mixed fuel on ignition characteristics.

In this study, characteristics of the development and auto-ignition/combustion of hydrogen jets were investigated in a constant-volume vessel. The authors focused on the effects of the jet developing process and thermodynamic states of the ambient gas on auto-ignition delays of hydrogen jets. The results show that the ambient gas temperature and nozzle-hole diameter are significantly effective parameters. By contrast, it is clarified that the ambient gas oxygen concentration has a weak effect on the auto-ignition/combustion of hydrogen jets. Consequently, it is supposed that the mixture formation process is capable of improving the auto-ignition/combustion of hydrogen jets.

A transient gas jet seems to be a model of a diesel spray because it has no vaporization process. Recently, CNG is utilized in a diesel engine. In the case of diesel engine, sprays or jets have the free state in some cases, and they are impinging surely on the piston surface in the other cases. The 2-D image of acetylene gas with tracer particles was taken by high-speed photography. In both jets, the outer shape was measured on the images and the characteristics of the internal flow was obtained by particle image velocimetry. Then, the physical models of these jets were constructed by use of experimental results.

CNG is one of the future fuel for a CI engine. Recently, the general tendency is the use of the high pressure injection system over 100 MPa in a CI engine for the near future severe regulation. Combustion phenomenon in a CI engine with such injection system is like a transient gas diffusion flame. The flow in a gas diffusion flame was investigated by the particle image velocimetry on its 2-D images, the relative soot concentration, the temperature and the relative CO2 concentration was detected in the experiments. And the model of transient gas diffusion flame was constructed by use of experimental data.

Almost all the researches relating to the characteristics of transient spray have carried out by using the fuel with only single component. However, the actual fuel oil supplying to a reciprocating engine has multiple components. Thus, this paper describes the experimental results on the characteristics of a transient spray formed by the mixed fuel with three kinds of pure fuel. The state of periphery of non evaporating spray near the nozzle outlet was arranged by the dimensionless number. And the technique of laser Induced fluorescence (LIF) was applied to an evaporating spray to find the state of mixing.

The combustion phenomena in an IDI diesel engine having a swirl chamber were detected by optical methods. The spatial and temporal distribution of the natural emission of OH radical was measured through the band pass filters and those of KL factor and flame temperature were obtained by the two-color method. As a consequence, the combustion phenomena are made clear by these experimental results.

This work investigates the soot formation process in diesel jet flame using a detailed kinetic soot model implemented into the KIVA-3V multidimensional CFD code and 2D imaging by use of time-resolved laser induced incandescence (LII). The numerical model is based on the KIVA code which is modified to use CHEMKIN as the chemistry solver using Message Passing Interface (MPI). This allows for the chemical reactions to be simulated in parallel on multiple CPUs. The detailed soot model used is based on the method of moments, which begins with fuel pyrolysis, followed by the formation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, their growth and coagulation into spherical particles, and finally, surface growth and oxidation of the particles. The model can describe the spatial and temporal characteristics of soot formation processes such as soot precursors distributions, nucleation rate and surface reaction rate.

A single cylinder engine has been run with direct-injection premixed charge compression ignition (PCCI) operation. The operation is fueled with primary reference fuels for a wide variety of injection timing and equivalence ratio to investigate the effect of charge stratification and octane rating on PCCI combustion. The test results showed that although the change of the injection timing can gain the high combustion efficiency for a wide range of equivalence ratio, the combustion phasing where the high combustion efficiency is accomplished is not varied only by changing the injection timings. Therefore, the only change of injection timings does not improve the thermal efficiency which is influenced by the combustion phasing. On the other hand, at the fixed compression ratio, inlet air temperature and so on, the octane rating is useful in altering the combustion phasing.

This work presents the ignition delay time characteristics of oxygenated fuel sprays under simulated diesel engine conditions. A constant volume combustion vessel is used for the experiments. The fuels used in the experiments were three oxygenated fuels: diethylene glycol dibutyl ether, diethylene glycol diethyl ether, and diethylene glycol dimethyl ether. JIS 2nd class gas oil was used as the reference fuel. The ambient gas temperature and oxygen concentration were ranging from 700 to 1100K and from 21 to 9%, respectively. The results show that the ignition delay of each oxygenated fuel tested in this experiments exhibits shorter than that of gas oil fuel for the wide range of ambient gas conditions. Also, NTC (negative temperature coefficient) behavior which appears under shock tube experiment for homogenous fuel-air mixture was observed on low ambient gas oxygen concentration for each fuel. And at the condition, the ignition behavior exhibits two-stage phase.

This paper describes the soot behavior in a diesel flame. The experiments were carried out in a constant volume chamber with quiescent atmosphere. Parameters were the ambient temperature and the oxygen concentration. The integrated image of flame was taken, the natural emission of flame was detected and the KL factor was found by means of classical technique of laser light extinction. The results were discussed by use of the apparent rate of heat release. As a result, the ignition delay and the vortex with large scale generated in a diesel spray affect the soot behavior in a diesel flame.

The Flame structure and combustion characteristics for two waste-cooking oils were investigated in detail. One fuel is the waste-cooking oil methyl esters. This fuel is actually applied to the garbage collection vehicle with DI diesel engine (B100) and the city bus (B20; 80% gas oil is mixed into B100 in volume) as an alternative fuel of gas oil in Kyoto City. Another one is the fuel with ozone treatment by removing impurities from raw waste-cooking oils. Here, in order to improve the fuel properties, kerosene is mixed 70% volume in this fuel. This mixed fuel (i-BDF) is applied into several tracks and buses in Wakayama City. In the experiments, the used fuels were gas oil, i-BDF, B100 and B20. Spray characteristics and basic combustion properties were measured inside a rapid compression and an expansion machine (RCEM).

The combustion of a diesel spray includes very complex processes, that is, atomization, evaporation, diffusion, turbulent mixing and burning. On the other hand, there are no phenomena of atomization and evaporation in the combustion of a transient gas jet. However, the latter jet can be treated as a fundamental of the former spray. From the standpoint mentioned above, acetylene gas was injected into the ambient during short duration as a transient gas jet and its flow characteristics were investigated by means of photography with a sheet of laser light and LDV to detect the turbulent vortex generated in the boundary layer between it and surroundings, in the experiments presented here. And the experimental results show that the jet itself is divided into four peculiar regions and the modelling of each region is carried out by use of the results to understand the mixture formation process owing to the turbulent diffusive mixing.

Large Eddy Simulation (LES) is applied to non-evaporative and evaporative diesel spray simulations. KIVALES, which is LES version of KIVA code, is used as the LES computational code. Modified TAB model is used as breakup model, and interpolated donor cell differencing scheme is employed to calculate convective terms. To validity LES simulation, LES results using KIVALES are compared with experimental results and simulated results with conventional RANS approach using KIVA3V res.2. The results show that the LES simulation of non-evaporative spray depends on the grid size in comparison with RANS simulation, and good agreement is obtained between experimental results and the LES results with fine grid (720,000 cells). Furthermore, asymmetric non-evaporative spray which has intermittency at the outer edge of sprays is simulated, since instantaneous turbulent flow field can be predicted directly in LES case.

A transient gas jet and its flame are the most fundamental phenomena of a transient spray and its flame breaking out in a CI engine and an SI engine with the direct injection system. In the case of CNG and LNG engines, the fuel itself is just gaseous state. The 2-LIF technique was applied to the transient gas jet to obtain the mixing process between the surroundings and it, and the simultaneous application of LII and LIS techniques were applied to the transient gas jet flame to obtain the soot formation process.

OH radical generated in a DI diesel engine has a close relationship to soot oxidation. To clarify this fact, the distribution of the natural emission of OH radical was captured by means of an interference filter system and that of soot was detected by the simultaneous application of a laser induced incandescence (LB) and a laser induced scattering (LIS). The experiments were carried out in a small sized high-speed DI diesel engine installed with an optical access view. The generation of OH radical and the formation/oxidation of soot are discussed by using both images.

This paper describes the results of on-board measurement of engine performance and emissions in diesel vehicle operated with bio-diesel fuels. Here, two waste-cooking oils were investigated. One fuel is a waste-cooking oil methyl esters. This fuel is actually applied to a garbage collection vehicle with DI diesel engine (B100) and the city bus (B20; 80% gas oil is mixed into B100 in volume) as an alternative fuel of gas oil in Kyoto City. Another one is a fuel with ozone treatment by removing impurities from raw waste-cooking oils. Here, in order to improve the fuel properties, kerosene is mixed 70% volume in this fuel. This mixed fuel (i-BDF) is applied into several tracks and buses in Wakayama City. Then, these 3 bio-diesel fuels were applied to the on-board experiments and the results were compared with gas oil operation case.

An unsteady single spray of n-tridecane which was mixed with a small quantity of exciplex - forming dopants, that is naphthalene and TMPD, was impinged on a flat wall surface with high temperature of 550 K at a normal angle. These experiments were carried out in a quiescent N2 atmosphere with high temperature of 700 K and high pressure of 2.5 MPa. It was possible to generate the fluorescence emissions from the vapor and liquid phases in this spray, when a laser light sheet from a Nd:YAG laser was passing through the cross section of the spray containing its central axis. Then, clear 2 - D images of vapor and liquid phases in the spray were acquired simultaneously by this method. And, the vapor concentration was analyzed quantitatively by applying Lambert - Beer's law to the measured TMPD monomer fluorescence intensity from vapor phase, and by correcting the intensity for the effect of the quenching process due to the ambient temperature and fuel concentration.

Authors propose the reformulation technique of physical properties of Biodiesel Fuel (BDF) by mixing lower boiling point fuels. In this study, waste cooking oil methyl ester (B100), which have been produced in Kyoto city, is used in behalf of BDF. N-Heptane (C7H16) and n-Dodecane (C12H26) are used as low and medium boiling point fuel. Mixed fuel of BDF with lower boiling point fuels have lighter quality as compared with neat BDF. This result is based on the chemical-thermo dynamical liquid-vapor equilibrium theory. This paper describes fundamental spray and combustion characteristics of mixed fuel of B100 with lower boiling point fuels as well as the reformulation technique. By mixing lower boiling point fuel, lighter quality fuels can be refined. Thus, mixed fuels have higher volatility and lower viscosity. Therefore, vaporization of mixed fuel spray is promoted and liquid phase penetration of mixed fuel shortens as compared with that of neat BDF.

It is thought that the synthetic gas, including hydrogen and carbon monoxide, has a potential to be an alternative fuel for internal combustion engines, because a heating value of the synthetic gas is higher than one of hydrogen or natural gas. A purpose of this study is to acquire stable auto-ignition and combustion of the synthetic gas which is supposed to be applied into a direct-injection compression ignition engine. In this study, the effects of ambient gas temperatures and oxygen concentrations on auto-ignition characteristics of the synthetic gas with changing percentage of hydrogen (H2) or carbon monoxide (CO) concentrations in the synthetic gas. An electronically-controlled, hydraulically-actuated gas injector was used to control a precise injection timing and period of gaseous fuels, and the experiments were conducted in an optically accessible, constant-volume combustion chamber under simulated quiescent diesel engine conditions.

A phenomenological or empirical model based on experimental results obtained from various optical measurements is critical for the understanding of DI diesel combustion phenomena as well as for the improvement of its emission characteristics. Such a model could be realized by the application of advanced optical measurement, which is able to isolate a particular phenomenon amongst complicated physical and chemical interactions, to a DI diesel combustion field. The authors have conducted experimental studies to clarify the combustion characteristics of unsteady turbulent diffusion flames in relation to the soot formation and oxidation process in a small-sized DI diesel engine. In the present study, the effect of fuel vapor concentration on the process of early combustion and soot formation has been investigated using several optical measurements.