Partial hydrogenation and hydrogen induction: A comparative study with B20 operation in a turbocharged CRDI diesel engine

Numerous studies explored the possibility and effective strategies for supplementing hydrogen along with fossil or biofuels on internal combustion engines. Hydrogen is also being employed for formulating fuels such as hydrogen compressed natural gas in the gaseous form and hydrogenated biofuels in the liquid form. The present study evaluates (i) hydrogen usage on the fuel formulation and (ii) investigates the engine operation of an automotive turbocharged diesel engine operated with karanja biodiesel blended diesel (B20) as a reference fuel. Existing literature outlines that biodiesel blends possess lower energy content and emit higher nitric oxide (NO) emission than fossil diesel. The present research paper partially hydrogenates karanja biodiesel using an autoclave reactor with a palladium catalyst to increase the saturation levels and mitigate the biodiesel-NO penalty. Besides, the drop in energy release of B20 is compensated through the provision of hydrogen induction along the intake manifold. The hydrogen flow rates to the turbocharged engine are maintained at a fixed energy share of 10%. Both biodiesel and hydrogenated biodiesel were blended on a volume basis (20%) with fossil diesel (80%) and are designated as B20 and HB20, respectively. The test results reveal that HB20 effectively mitigates the biodiesel-NO penalty with a maximum reduction of 29.8% compared to B20. Further, hydrogen induction yielded a significant improvement (23.7%) in fuel consumption with HB20 relative to B20 without hydrogen addition. The compounding effect of hydrogen usage on the engine operation and fuel formulation exhibited a better performance and emission trade-off at mid load conditions.