Assessment of flexible low carbon fuelled dual fuel compression ignition engine

Abstract

Over the last two decades, efforts have been undertaken by various researchers and industries to develop and deploy alternative fuels for gasoline and diesel fuels due to the degradation of the environment and a surge in the cost of petroleum products. The Compression Ignition (CI) engines are most commonly employed in commercial vehicles due to its higher efficiency, hence, the Diesel consumption in most of the countries is about 5 to 6 times higher than gasoline. However, Diesel engines emit the most significant pollutants, namely, oxides of nitrogen (NOx), and Particulate Matter. In this context, low carbon and no carbon fuels like methane, hydrogen and biodiesel have been found to be suitable alternatives. Though methane and hydrogen are clean fuels, they cannot be used as sole fuels in CI engines, hence, in the present study methane and hydrogen along with waste cooking oil biodiesel were used in a direct injection CI engine in partially premixed compression ignition (PPCI) mode. An experimental study was carried out to investigate the effect of intake air-preheating, exhaust gas re-circulation (EGR), and hydrogen enrichment on the performance, combustion, and emission characteristics of Methane /waste cooking oil biodiesel (B50) fueled CI engine in PPCI mode and a numerical study was carried out to investigate the effect of split injection on the characteristics of H2-methane/B50 fueled PPCI engine. In the case of experimental study, waste cooking oil biodiesel (B50) which is treated by transesterification is used as a pilot fuel was directly injected into the combustion chamber at the end of the compression stroke i.e. 23and#778; bTDC. The methane /H2-methane was injected as the main fuel in the intake port during the suction stroke using a low-pressure (4 bar) electronic port fuel injector which was controlled by an electronic control unit. newline newline newline