A review on plasma combustion of fuel in internal combustion engines

In recent years, new ways of improving the combustion efficiency of fuel during gas turbine operations have been developed. The most significant has been the application of plasma technology for the combustion of fuel in gas turbine operations. Plasma is formed when gas is exposed to either high temperature or high‐voltage electricity. This technology is very promising and has proven to enhance the performance of gas turbines and reduce toxic emissions. Recent studies have shown the use of different types of plasma applications in gas turbine operations such as plasma torch, filamentary discharge, and nanosecond pulse discharge, whose results show that plasma technology has great potential in improving flame stabilization, the fuel/air mixing ratio, and flash point values of these fuels. These findings and advances have further provided new opportunities in the development of efficient plasma discharges for practical uses in plasma combustion of fuel for gas turbine operations. This article is a comprehensive overview of the advances and blind spots in the knowledge of plasma combustion of fuel during internal combustion engine operations. This review also focuses on applications, methods, and experimental results in plasma combustion of fuel in gas turbines.     

Towards a detailed soot model for internal combustion engines

In this work, we present a detailed model for the formation of soot in internal combustion engines describing not only bulk quantities such as soot mass, number density, volume fraction, and surface area but also the morphology and chemical composition of soot aggregates. The new model is based on the Stochastic Reactor Model (SRM) engine code, which uses detailed chemistry and takes into account convective heat transfer and turbulent mixing, and the soot formation is accounted for by SWEEP, a population balance solver based on a Monte Carlo method. In order to couple the gas-phase to the particulate phase, a detailed chemical kinetic mechanism describing the combustion of Primary Reference Fuels (PRFs) is extended to include small Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) such as pyrene, which function as soot precursor species for particle inception in the soot model. Apart from providing averaged quantities as functions of crank angle like soot mass, volume fraction, aggregate diameter, and the number of primary particles per aggregate for example, the integrated model also gives detailed information such as aggregate and primary particle size distribution functions. In addition, specifics about aggregate structure and composition, including C/H ratio and PAH ring count distributions, and images similar to those produced with Transmission Electron Microscopes (TEMs), can be obtained. The new model is applied to simulate an n-heptane fuelled Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) engine which is operated at an equivalence ratio of 1.93. In-cylinder pressure and heat release predictions show satisfactory agreement with measurements. Furthermore, simulated aggregate size distributions as well as their time evolution are found to qualitatively agree with those obtained experimentally through snatch sampling. It is also observed both in the experiment as well as in the simulation that aggregates in the trapped residual gases play a vital role in the soot formation process.     

Second-law analyses applied to internal combustion engines operation

This paper surveys the publications available in the literature concerning the application of the second-law of thermodynamics to internal combustion engines. The availability (exergy) balance equations of the engine cylinder and subsystems are reviewed in detail providing also relations concerning the definition of state properties, chemical availability, flow and fuel availability, and dead state. Special attention is given to identification and quantification of second-law efficiencies and the irreversibilities of various processes and subsystems. The latter being particularly important since they are not identified in traditional first-law analysis. In identifying these processes and subsystems, the main differences between second- and first-law analyses are also highlighted. A detailed reference is made to the findings of various researchers in the field over the last 40 years concerning all types of internal combustion engines, i.e. spark ignition, compression ignition (direct or indirect injection), turbocharged or naturally aspirated, during steady-state and transient operation. All of the subsystems (compressor, aftercooler, inlet manifold, cylinder, exhaust manifold, turbine), are also covered. Explicit comparative diagrams, as well as tabulation of typical energy and exergy balances, are presented. The survey extends to the various parametric studies conducted, including among other aspects the very interesting cases of low heat rejection engines, the use of alternative fuels and transient operation. Thus, the main differences between the results of second- and first-law analyses are highlighted and discussed.     

A simulation of the combustion of hydrogen in HCCI engines using a 3D model with detailed chemical kinetics

The influence of changes in the swirl velocity of the intake mixture on the combustion processes within a homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) engine fueled with hydrogen were investigated analytically. A turbulent transient 3D predictive computational model which was developed and applied to the HCCI engine combustion system, incorporated detailed chemical kinetics for the oxidation of hydrogen. The effects of changes in the initial intake swirl, temperature and pressure, engine speed and compression and equivalence ratios on the combustion characteristics of a hydrogen fuelled HCCI engine were also examined. It is shown that an increase in the initial flow swirl ratio or speed lengthens the delay period for autoignition and extends the combustion period while reducing NO_x emissions. There are optimum values of the initial swirl ratio and engine speed for a certain mixture intake temperature, pressure, compression and equivalence ratios operational conditions that can achieve high thermal efficiencies and low NO_x emissions while reducing the tendency to knock     

Hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engines

The threat posed by climate change and the striving for security of energy supply are issues high on the political agenda these days. Governments are putting strategic plans in motion to decrease primary energy use, take carbon out of fuels and facilitate modal shifts.     

On the emissions from internal-combustion engines: a review

The urban air pollution is a very complicated problem. The exhaust emissions from internal-combustion engines account for a major portion of this problem. It is realized that the content and concentrations of the exhaust emissions depend on various parameters. These parameters include engine design parameters, operational parameters, exhaust gas aftertreatment, fuel types, fuel additives and lubricants. The present review paper discusses the effect of some parameters on the emission level and characteristics from internal-combustion engines. The paper begins with an introduction of general information on the nature of emissions of exhaust gases, including the toxicity and causes of emissions for both spark-ignition and diesel engines. The paper then shifts to an up-to-date information of the published research work on the subject matter. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fuel Economy Opportunities for Internal COmbustion Engines by Means of Oil—Cooling

INTRODUCTIoNHeattransferbetweentheworkingmediuminare-ciprocatingengineanditscombustionchamberwallplaysaveryimportantroleintheenginethermalpro-cess.Alargeamountofheatsuppliedbythefuelislosttothecoolantthroughthecombustorwall.Thepercentagerangesfrom1o-25atfullloadto3ty35atlightloadcondition[11.Sincetheconceptofadi-abaticturbocompoundengineswaspresentedin1atel97o's[zl,worldwideattentionhasbeenattractedtotheopportunitiestoimprovethefuelconsumptionbyreducingtheheattransferratesthroughthecom-bus…     

内燃机代用燃料的发展分析

指出与说明了代用燃料的定义、分类、选择以及使用标准,概述了内燃机代用燃料的发展历史和研究现状,总结了国内外内燃机代用燃料的发展与应用动态。指出由于石油资源的日益减少,代用燃料是今后能源应用与研究的方向。     

Availability analysis of n-heptane and natural gas blends combustion in HCCI engines

One of the major problems associated with HCCI combustion engine application is lack of direct control for combustion timing. A proposed solution for combustion timing control is using a binary fuel blend in which two fuels with different auto-ignition characteristics are blended at various ratios on a cycle-by-cycle basis.The aim of this research is to investigate the exergy analysis of HCCI combustion when a blended fuel, which consists of n-heptane and natural gas, is used. In order to accomplish this task, a single-zone combustion model has been developed, which performs combustion computations using a complete chemical kinetics mechanism.The study was carried out with different percentages of natural gas in blended fuels and EGR (exhaust gas recirculation) ranging from about 45 to 85 percent and 0 to 40 percent, respectively. The results reveal that, when mass percentage of natural gas increases, exergy destruction is decreased increasing the second-law efficiency. Introducing EGR into the intake charge of dual fuel HCCI engine up to some stage (optimum value) enhances the second-law performance of the engine in spite of a reduction in work.     

High-efficiency internal combustion engine for hybrid hydrogen-electric locomotives

Hydrogen electric locomotives are receiving growing attention and progressing towards net zero. This letter discusses the improvement of traditional diesel-electric locomotives to use hydrogen and reduce energy demand. An internal combustion engine featuring direct injection and jet ignition of the hydrogen is proposed. The four-strokes, 12 L, V12 engine achieves peak power of 750 kW and peak efficiency above 46%. The propulsion system may be further optimized by adopting battery energy storage to buffer the operation of the engine and provide extra power when accelerating. This way, the engine may be further optimized to work over a narrower range of speeds and loads and be made smaller to provide reduced power.     

Potential direct use of solid biomass in internal combustion engines

The direct use of dry biomass dust as a fuel in reciprocating engines could be of great interest because of the large availability of plant matter and the versatility of Internal Combustion Engines (ICE). Coal dust was used in the past and mostly in slurries because of large production during industrial era in Europe but led to many problems caused by fuel handling and wear in ICE. In comparison, biomass has a CO₂ neutral impact, and is almost ash and sulphur free. Biomass pulverization technologies are now mature and the raw material can be reduced to micronic size or even smaller. Among the various new and renewable fuels under research and development, solid raw biomass is certainly the most promising advanced biofuel. It requires no or little thermochemical or biological processing or upgrading and potentially does not generate waste, detrimental to the environment. After a general overview of the past attempts to run reciprocating engines with coal dust, this paper will assess the so far unconsidered use of dry biomass dust as a fuel in engines instead of abrasive, less volatile and more polluting coal dust.     

Large eddy simulation of highly turbulent under-expanded hydrogen and methane jets for gaseous-fuelled internal combustion engines

Burning hydrogen in conventional internal combustion (IC) engines is associated with zero carbon-based tailpipe exhaust emissions. In order to obtain high volumetric efficiency and eliminate abnormal combustion modes such as preignition and backfire, in-cylinder direct injection (DI) of hydrogen is considered preferable for a future generation of hydrogen IC engines. However, hydrogen's low density requires high injection pressures for fast hydrogen penetration and sufficient in-cylinder mixing. Such pressures lead to chocked flow conditions during the injection process which result in the formation of turbulent under-expanded hydrogen jets. In this context, fundamental understanding of the under-expansion process and turbulent mixing just after the nozzle exit is necessary for the successful design of an efficient hydrogen injection system and associated injection strategies. The current study used large eddy simulation (LES) to investigate the characteristics of hydrogen under-expanded jets with different nozzle pressure ratios (NPR), namely 8.5, 10, 30 and 70. A test case of methane injection with NPR = 8.5 was also simulated for direct comparison with the hydrogen jetting under the same NPR. The near-nozzle shock structure, the geometry of the Mach disk and reflected shock angle, as well as the turbulent shear layer were all captured in very good agreement with data available in the literature. Direct comparison between hydrogen and methane fuelling showed that the ratio of the specific heats had a noticeable effect on the near-nozzle shock structure and dimensions of the Mach disk. It was observed that with methane, mixing did not occur before the Mach disk, whereas with hydrogen high levels of momentum exchange and mixing appeared at the boundary of the intercepting shock. This was believed to be the effect of the high turbulence fluctuations at the nozzle exit of the hydrogen jet which triggered Gortler vortices. Generally, the primary mixing was observed to occur after the location of the Mach disk and particularly close to the jet boundaries where large-scale turbulence played a dominant role. It was also found that NPR had significant effect on the mixture's local fuel richness. Finally, it was noted that applying higher injection pressure did not essentially increase the penetration length of the hydrogen jets and that there could be an optimum NPR that would introduce more enhanced mixing whilst delivering sufficient fuel in less time. Such an optimum NPR could be in the region of 100 based on the geometry and observations of the current study.     

A critical review: Application of methanol as a fuel for internal combustion engines and effects of blending methanol with diesel/biodiesel/ethanol on performance,emission, and combustion characteristics of engines

This article presents a comprehensive overview of methanol as a potential oxygenated fuel for internal combustion engines. Here two approaches have been examined to evaluate the utilization of methanol, namely blending with diesel/biodiesel/methanol and premixing with intake air or fumigation. In conventional compression ignition engines, up to 95% and 25% diesel can be replaced by methanol through fumigation and blending, respectively. Higher latent heat of vaporization of alcohol led to lower peak in-cylinder pressure and NO_x; however, it negatively affects thermal efficiency and hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide emissions. Fumigation of alcohol requires modifications in the existing engine, whereas blending needed surfactants or additives to produce stable alcohol–diesel blends. High injection pressure and late direct injection, methanol–diesel blends have shown lower emissions and proved their potential as a suitable replacement for ethanol–diesel blends from the components durability perspective.     

Investigations on the effects of intake temperature and charge dilution in a hydrogen fueled HCCI engine

This work was aimed at improving the performance and extending the load range of hydrogen fueled homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) engine through charge temperature regulation and addition of carbon dioxide in order to control the combustion phasing. Intake charge temperature and equivalence ratio were varied from 130 °C to 80 °C and 0.19 to 0.3 respectively. In the neat hydrogen mode it was possible to operate the engine only until a brake mean effective pressure (BMEP) of 2.2 bar. Higher charge temperatures lead to knocking and advanced combustion. At any equivalence ratio the lowest possible charge temperature is the one that leads to the highest thermal efficiency. Addition of carbon dioxide retarded the combustion process and improved the thermal efficiency and also extended the load range to a BMEP of 3.1 bar. Efficiencies of hydrogen HCCI mode were higher than the conventional diesel mode with negligible level of NO emissions.     

Determination of cycle number for real in-cylinder pressure cycle analysis in internal combustion engines

The in-cylinder pressure of internal combustion engines is one of the most important measurable parameter for analyzing the factors affecting performance characteristics of the engine. In many studies, in-cylinder pressure data are averaged over certain number of cycles at each crank angle in order to observe the effects of the parameters. If the number of cycles included is low, then the results may be misleading due to cyclic variations of in-cylinder pressure. The desired level of accuracy can only be obtained if the number of cycles is increased with increasing cyclic variations. The number of cycles used by researchers varies in the literature even for the same subject of study such as research and development, cyclic variations, cycle simulation, etc. There is no general agreement about how many cycle should be taken to obtain the average cycle to remove the effects of cyclic variations. The purpose of this study is therefore to determine the sufficient minimum cycle number at various engine operating conditions on a spark ignition engine by using statistical Levene’s test. The results showed that 50 cycles are enough to do accurate calculation of the average pressure cycle at various operation conditions of the engine.     

Using green-hydrogen and bioethanol fuels in internal combustion engines to reduce emissions

Air pollution is increasing globally, coupled with the downward trend in oil reserves. It is important to consider recent researches on renewable fuels such as bioethanol, bioturbosine, biodiesel, green-hydrogen (gH₂), among others, as viable options to help reduce the impact of the use and consumption of fossil fuels. In this work is analyzed the Greenhouse Gases production (GHG) by combustion of binary and ternary mixtures, in a 5500 W portable engine generator of alternating current; connecting to the generator three electric charges as a dynamic brake. It were measured the decrements in the production of CO, HC and NO_x of up to 99%, 93% and 67%, respectively, as well as an increment in CO₂ up to 35%; in addition, reduction in uptake fuel of more than 36%. Therefore, the reduction of GHG emissions will improve the quality of air in the cities, at the same time the quality of people's health.     

Simulation of HCCI combustion in air-cooled off-road engines fuelled with diesel and biodiesel

The present work describes the elaboration of a predictive tool consisting on a phenomenological multi-zone model, applicable to the simulation of HCCI combustion of both diesel and biodiesel fuels. The mentioned predictive tool is created with the aim to be applied in the future to perform engine characterization during both pre-design and post-design stages. The methodology applied to obtain the proposed predictive model is based on the generation of an analytical mechanism that, given a set of regression variables representing the engine operative conditions, provides the user with the optimal figures for the scaling coefficients needed to particularize both the ignition delay and the heat release rate functional laws, which rule the combustion development in the proposed multi-zone model for HCCI engines. The validation of the proposed predictive multi-zone model consists on the comparison between chamber pressure curve derived from the simulations and experimental data based on a DEUTZ FL1 906 unit modified in order to allow HCCI combustion operation mode using diesel EN590 and rapeseed biodiesel. Finally, evidences of the capabilities of the proposed model to be used as a predictive tool applicable to the analysis of off-road engines under HCCI conditions are provided, consisting in the characterization and optimization of the operational maps related to both Brake Specific Fuel Consumption and NOx emissions.     

The hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engine: a technical review

A review is given of contemporary research on the hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engine. The emphasis is on light- to medium-duty engine research. We first describe hydrogen-engine fundamentals by examining the engine-specific properties of hydrogen and surveying the existing literature. Here it will be shown that, due to low volumetric efficiencies and frequent preignition combustion events, the power densities of premixed or port-fuel-injected hydrogen engines are diminished relative to gasoline-fueled engines. Significant progress has been made in the development of advanced hydrogen engines with improved power densities. We discuss several examples and their salient features. Finally, we consider the overall progress made and provide suggestions for future work.