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This paper aims to validate chemical kinetic mechanisms of surrogate gasoline three components fuel by calculating one-dimensional laminar burning velocity of iso-octane/air mixture. Next, the application of level-set method on premixed combustion without consideration the effect of turbulence eddies on flame front is also studied in three-dimensional computational fluid dynamic (3D-CFD) simulation. In the 3D CFD simulation, there is an option to calculate laminar burning velocity by using empirical correlations, however it is applicable only for particular initial pressure and temperature in spark ignition engine cases. One-dimensional burning velocities from lean to rich of iso-octane/air mixture are calculated by using CHEMKIN-PRO with detailed chemistry and transport phenomena as a function of different equivalence ratios, different unburnt temperature and pressure ranges.

Pre-chamber spark ignition technology can stabilize combustion and improve thermal efficiency of lean burn natural gas engines. During compression stroke, a homogeneous lean mixture is introduced into pre-chamber, which separates spark plug electrodes from turbulent flow field. After the pre-chamber mixture is ignited, the burnt jet gas is discharged through multi-hole nozzles which promotes combustion of the lean mixture in the main chamber due to turbulence caused by high speed jet and multi-points ignition. However, details mechanism in the process has not been elucidated. To design the pre-chamber geometry and to achieve stable combustion under the lean condition for such engines, it is important to understand the fundamental aspects of the combustion process. In this study, a high-speed video camera with a 306 nm band-pass filer and an image intensifier is used to visualize OH* self-luminosity in rapid compression-expansion machine experiment.

A numerical study was carried out to investigate combustion characteristics of a dual-fuel gas diesel engine, using a multi-dimensional model combined with detailed chemical kinetics, including 43 chemical species and 173 elementary reactions. In calculations, the effects of initial temperature, EGR ratios on ignition, and combustion were examined. The results indicated EGR combined with intake preheating can favorably reduced NOx and THC emissions simultaneously. This can be explained by the fact that combustion mechanism is changed from flame propagation to HCCl like combustion.

Natural gas pre-mixture is ignited by a small amount of pilot fuel in the dual fuel engine. In this paper, numerical studies were carried out to investigate the combustion and exhaust gas emissions formation process of this engine type by using a multi dimensional model combined with the detailed chemical kinetics including 57 chemical species and 290 elementary reactions. In calculation, the effect of the pre-mixture concentration on combustion was examined. The result indicated that the increased concentration of natural gas could improve the burning fraction and THC, CO emissions due to the increased pre-mixture consumption rate and the cylinders gas temperature.

A CFD code combined with detailed chemical kinetics has been developed, linking with KIVA-3 and subroutines in CHEMKIN-II directly with some modifications. By using this CFD code, formation processes of combustion and exhaust gas emission for a turbo-charged DI diesel engine with common rail fuel injection system were simulated. As a result, formation processes of pollutant including NOx and soot were also considered according to the calculation results. The results show that NO caused by the extended Zeldvich mechanism accounted for about 88% of all NO, and it was found that there is a possibility to predict where and when soot will be formed by considering a simplified soot formation model.

A three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (3D-CFD) code was combined with a detailed combustion chamber heat transfer model. The established model allowed not only prediction of instantaneous combustion chamber wall surface temperature distributions in practical calculation time but also investigation of the characteristics of combustion, emissions and heat losses affected by the wall temperature distributions. Although zero-dimensional combustion analysis can consider temporal changes in the heat transfer coefficient and in-cylinder gas temperature, it cannot take into account the effect of interactions between spatially distributed charge and wall temperatures. In contrast, 3D-CFD analysis can consider temporal and spatial changes in both parameters. However, in most zero-/multi- dimensional combustion analyses, wall temperatures are assumed to be temporally constant and spatially homogeneous.

Natural gas is an attractive alternative fuel for internal combustion engines. Homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) combustion is considered to be one of the most promising measures for increasing thermal efficiency and reducing emissions, but it is difficult to control and stabilize its ignition and combustion processes. This paper describes an experimental study of natural gas combustion utilizing two types of ignition assistance. Spark assistance, which is used for conventional spark ignition (SI) engines, and pilot diesel injection, hereinafter called diesel pilot, which generates multiple ignition points by using a small injection of diesel that accounts for 2% of the total heat release for the cycle. The performance of these two approaches was compared with respect to various combustion characteristics when burning homogeneous natural gas mixtures at a high compression ratio.

A new type of fuel injection nozzle, called a “slit nozzle,” has been developed to improve poor ignitability and to stabilize combustion under low load conditions in direct-injection methanol diesel engines manufactured for medium-duty trucks. This nozzle has a single oblong vent like a slit. Engine test results indicate that the slit nozzle can improve combustion and thermal efficiency, especially at low loads and no load. This can be explained by the fact that the slit nozzle forms a more highly concentrated methanol spray around the glow-plug than do multi-hole nozzles. As a result, this nozzle improves flame propagation.

The reduced chemical reaction scheme which can take the effect of major fuel components on auto ignition timing into account has been developed. This reaction scheme was based on the reduced reaction mechanism for the primary reference fuels (PRF) proposed by Tsurushima [1] with 33 species and 38 reactions. Some pre-exponential factors were modified by using Particle Swarm Optimization to match the ignition delay time versus reciprocal temperature which was calculated by the detailed scheme with 2,301 species and 11,116 elementary chemical reactions. The result using the present reaction scheme shows good agreements with that using the detailed scheme for the effects of EGR, fuel components, and radical species on the ignition timing under homogeneous charge compression ignition combustion (HCCI) conditions.

This study examines the effects of ethanol content on engine performances and the knock characteristics in spark ignition gasoline engine under various compression ratio conditions by cylinder pressure analysis, visualization and numerical simulation. The results confirm that increasing the ethanol content provides for greater engine torque and thermal efficiency as a result of the improvement of knock tolerance. It was also confirmed that increasing the compression ratio together with increasing ethanol content is effective to overcome the shortcomings of poor fuel economy caused by the low calorific value of ethanol. Further, the results of one dimensional flame propagation simulation show that ethanol content increase laminar burning velocity. Moreover, the results of visualization by using a bore scope demonstrate that ethanol affects the increase of initial flame propagation speed and thus helps suppress knock.

Pre-chamber (PC) natural gas and hydrogen (CH4-H2) combustion can improve thermal efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions from decarbonized stationary engines. However, the engine efficiency is worsened by prolonged combustion duration due to PC jet velocity extinction. This work investigates the impact of cylindrical PC internal shapes to increase its jet velocity and shorten combustion duration. A rapid compression and expansion machine (RCEM) is used to investigate the combustion characteristics of premixed CH4 gas. The combustion images are recorded using a high-speed camera of 10,000 fps. The experiments are conducted using two types of long PC shapes with diameters φ=4 mm (hereafter, longφ4) and 5 mm (hereafter, long φ5), and their combustions are compared against a short PC shape (φ=12 mm). For all designs of the PC shapes, the PC holes are 6 with 2 mm in diameter.

Synthetic fuels can significantly improve the combustion and emission characteristics of heavy-duty diesel engines toward decarbonizing heavy-duty propulsion systems. This work analyzes the effects of engine operating conditions and synthetic fuel properties on spray, combustion, and emissions (soot, NOx) using a supercharging single-cylinder engine experiment and KIVA-4 code combined with CHEMKIN-II and in-house phenomenological soot model. The blended fuel ratio is fixed at 80% diesel and 20% n-paraffin by volume (hereafter DP). Diesel, DP1 (diesel with n-pentane C5H12), DP2 (diesel with n-hexane C6H14), and DP3 (diesel with n-heptane C7H16) are used in engine-like-condition constant volume chamber (CVC) and engine experiments. Boosted engine experiments (1080 rpm, common-rail injection pressure 160 MPa, multi-pulse injection) are performed using the same DP fuel groups under various main injection timings, pulse-injection intervals, and EGR = 0-40%.

Experimental and numerical studies on PAHs (Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons) and PM (Particulate Matters) formed in the fuel rich mixture have been conducted. In the experiment, neat n-heptane and n-heptane with benzene 25 % by weight were chosen as test fuels. In-cylinder gases produced by the fuel-rich HCCI (Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition) combustion were directly sampled and analyzed by the use of GC/MS (Gas Chromatograph/Mass Spectro- metry), and PM emission was also measured by PM sampling system to reveal characteristics of PM formation. Numerical study has been also carried out using a zero dimensional combustion model combined with detailed chemistry. Furthermore, simple surface growth of soot particles was integrated into a detailed chemical kinetic model, and validated with the experimental data.

Experimental and numerical studies are conducted on the formation of soot and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs), regarded as precursors of soot, during the combustion of fuel-rich homogeneous n-heptane mixtures. In-cylinder gases are sampled directly through a high-speed solenoid valve in engine tests, to be analyzed by GC/MS for qualifying PAHs. Smoke concentration is also measured. A numerical study is carried out by using a zero-dimensional model combined with detailed chemical kinetics. The experiments and computations show that PAHs can be predicted qualitatively by means of the present kinetic model.

Three types of combustion chamber configurations (Types A, B, and C) with compression ratio lower than that of the baseline were tested for improved performance and exhaust gas emissions from an inline-four-cylinder 1.7-liter common-rail diesel engine manufactured for use with passenger cars. First, three combustion chambers were examined numerically using CFD code. Second, engine tests were conducted by using Type B combustion chamber, which is expected to have the best performance and exhaust gas emissions of all. As a result, 80% of NOx emissions at both low and medium loads at 1500 rpm, the engine speed used frequently in the actual city driving, improved with nearly no degradation in smoke emissions and brake thermal efficiency. It was shown that a large amount of cooled EGR enables NOx-free combustion with long ignition delay.

A dual fuel natural gas diesel engine suffers from remarkably lower thermal efficiency and higher THC, CO emissions at lower load because of its lower burned mass fraction caused by the lean pre-mixture. To overcome this inevitable disadvantage at lower load, two methods of reducing the number of operating cylinders were examined. One method was to use the two cylinders operation while the second one was to use the quasi-two cylinders operation. As a result, it was found that the unburned hydrocarbons and CO emissions could be favorably reduced with the improvement of thermal efficiency by reducing the number of cylinders to half for a dual fuel natural gas diesel engine. Moreover, it was also found that the quasi-two cylinders operation could improve the torque fluctuation more compared to the two cylinders operation.

It has been recognized that alternative fuels such as liquid petroleum gas (LPG) has less polluting combustion characteristics than diesel fuel. Direct-injection stratified-charge combustion LPG engines with spark-ignition can potentially replace conventional diesel engines by achieving a more efficient combustion with less pollution. However, there are many unknowns regarding LPG spray mixture formation and combustion in the engine cylinder thus making the development of high-efficiency LPG engines difficult. In this study, LPG was injected into a high pressure and temperature atmosphere inside a constant volume chamber to reproduce the stratification processes in the engine cylinder. The spray was made to hit an impingement wall with a similar profile as a piston bowl. Spray images were taken using the Schlieren and laser induced fluorescence (LIF) method to analyze spray penetration and evaporation characteristics.

Natural gas has been used in spark-ignition (SI) engines of natural gas vehicles (NGVs) due to its resource availability and stable price compared to gasoline. It has the potential to reduce carbon monoxide emissions from the SI engines due to its high hydrogen-to-carbon ratio. However, short running distance is an issue of the NGVs. In this work, methodologies to improve the fuel economy of a heavy-duty commercial truck under the Japanese Heavy-Duty Driving Cycle (JE05) is proposed by numerical 1D-CFD modeling. The main objective is a comparative analysis to find an optimal fuel economy under three variable mechanisms, variable valve timing (VVT), variable valve actuation (VVA), and variable compression ratio (VCR). Experimental data are taken from a six-cylinder turbocharged SI engine fueled by city gas 13A. The 9.83 L production engine is a CR11 type with a multi-point injection system operated under a stoichiometric mixture.

Natural gas is a promising alternative fuel for internal combustion engines because of its clean combustion characteristics and abundant reserves. However, it has several disadvantages due to its low energy density and low thermal efficiency at low loads. Thus, to assist efforts to improve the thermal efficiency of spark-ignited (SI) engines operating on natural gas and to minimize test procedures, a numerical simulation model was developed to predict and optimize the performance of a turbocharged test engine, considering flame propagation, occurrence of knock and ignition timing. The numerical results correlate well with empirical data, and show that increasing compression ratios and retarding the intake valve closing (IVC) timing relative to selected baseline conditions could effectively improve thermal efficiency. In addition, employing moderate EGR ratios is also effective for avoiding knock.

To facilitate research and development of diesel engines, the universal numerical code for predicting diesel combustion has been favored for the past decade. In this paper, the finite-rate elementary chemical reactions, sometimes called the detailed chemical reactions, are introduced into the KIVA-3V code through the use of the Partially Stirred Reactor (PaSR) model with the KH-RT break-up, modified collision and velocity interpolation models. Outcomes were such that the predicted pressure histories have favorable agreements with the measurements of single and double injection cases in the diesel engine for use in passenger cars. Thus, it is demonstrated that the present model will be a useful tool for predicting ignition and combustion characteristics encountered in the cylinder.