Ignition Behavior of Gasolines and Surrogate Fuels in Low Temperature Combustion Strategies PDF Download

Author: Vickey Kalaskar
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Languages : en
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Book Description
This dissertation discusses the results from three different studies aimed at understanding the importance of fuel chemical structure during low temperature combustion (LTC) strategies, like homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) and partially premixed combustion (PPC) employed in internal combustion (IC) engines wherein the focus is on high octane fuels. Boosted intake air operation combined with exhaust gas recirculation, internal as well as external, has become a standard path for expanding the load limits of IC engines employing LTC strategies mentioned above as well as conventional diesel and spark ignition (SI) engines. However, the effects of fuel compositional variation have not been fully explored. The first study focusses on three different fuels, where each of them were evaluated using a single cylinder boosted HCCI engine using negative valve overlap. The three fuels investigated were: a regular grade gasoline (RON = 90.2), 30% ethanol-gasoline blend (E30, RON = 100.3), and 24% iso-butanol-gasoline blend (IB24, RON = 96.6). Detailed sweeps of intake manifold pressure (atmospheric to 250 kPaa), EGR (0 -- 25% EGR), and injection timing were conducted to identify fuel-specific effects. While significant fuel compositional differences existed, the results showed that all these fuels achieved comparable operation with minor changes in operational conditions. Further, it was shown that the available enthalpy from the exhaust would not be sufficient to satisfy the boost requirements at higher load operation by doing an analysis of the required turbocharger efficiency. While the first study concentrated on load expansion of HCCI, it is important to mention that controlling LTC strategies is difficult under low load or idle operating conditions. To ensure stable operation, fuel injection in the negative valve overlap (NVO) is used as one of method of achieving combustion control. However the combustion chemistry under high temperature and fuel rich conditions that exist during the NVO have not been previously explored. The second study focused on examining the products of fuel rich chemistry as a result of fuel injection in the NVO. In this study, a unique six stroke cycle was used to segregate the exhaust from the NVO and to study the chemistry of the range of fuels injected during NVO under low oxygen conditions. The fuels investigated were methanol, ethanol, iso-butanol, and iso-octane. It was observed that the products of reactions under NVO conditions were highly dependent on the injected fuel's structure with iso-octane producing less than 1.5% hydrogen and methanol producing more than 8%. However a weak dependence was observed on NVO duration and initial temperature, indicating that NVO reforming was kinetically limited. Finally, the experimental trends were compared with CHEMKIN (single zone, 0-D model) predictions using multiple kinetic mechanism that were readily available through literature. Due to the simplicity of the model and inadequate information on the fuel injection process, the experimental data was not modeled well with the mechanisms tested. Some of the shortcomings of the 0-D model were probably due to the model ignoring temperature and composition spatial inhomogeneities and evaporative cooling from fuel vaporization.Though the results from the NVO injection and boosted NVO-HCCI studies are enlightening, the fundamentals of the autoignition behavior of gasoline, alcohols, and their mixtures are not entirely understood despite the interest in high octane fuels in compression engines from a point of view of better thermal efficiency. The third study focused on higher octane blends consisting of binary and ternary mixtures of n-heptane and/or iso-octane, and a fuel of interest. These fuels of interest were toluene, ethanol, and iso-butanol. In this study, the autoignition of such blends is studied under lean conditions ([phi] = 0.25) with varying intake pressure (atmospheric to 3 bar, abs) and at a constant intake temperature of 155 °C. The blends consisted of varying percentages of fuels of interest and their research octane number (RON) approximately estimated at 100 and 80. For comparison, neat iso-octane was selected as RON 100 fuel and PRF 80 blend was selected as RON 80 fuel. It was observed that the blends with a higher percentage of n-heptane showed a stronger tendency to autoignite at lower intake pressures. However, as the intake pressure was increased, the non-reactive components, in this case, the higher octane blend components (toluene, ethanol, and iso-butanol), reduced this tendency subsequently delaying the critical compression ratio (CCR) of the blends. The heat release analysis revealed that the higher octane components in the blends reduced the low temperature reactivity of n-heptane and iso-octane. GC-MS and GC-FID analysis of the partially compressed fuel also indicated that the higher octane components did affect the conversion of the more reactive components, n-heptane and iso-octane, into their partially oxidized branched hydrocarbons in the binary/ternary blends, and reduced the overall reactivity which resulted in a delayed CCR at higher intake pressures.