Fuel Effects on Combustion and Emissions of a Direct-Inection Diesel Engine Operating at Moderate to High Engine Speed and Load
- ORNL
- General Motors Corporation
It is advantageous to increase the specific power output of diesel engines and to operate them at higher load for a greater portion of a driving cycle to achieve better thermal efficiency and thus reduce vehicle fuel consumption. Such operation is limited by excessive smoke formation at retarded injection timing and high rates of cylinder pressure rise at more advanced timing. Given this window of operation, it is desired to understand the influence of fuel properties such that optimum combustion performance and emissions can be retained over the range of fuels commonly available in the marketplace. It has been shown in previous studies that varying cetane number (CN) of diesel fuel has little effect on ignition delay at high engine load due to the domination of high cylinder temperature on ignition kinetics. The work here experimentally confirms that finding but also shows that emissions and combustion performance vary according to fuel reactivity. Data are examined from a direct-injection single cylinder research engine for eight common diesel fuels including soy-based biodiesel blends at two high load operating points with no exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) and at a moderate load with four levels of EGR. It is shown in the work that at high engine load where combustion is controlled by mixing processes, CN and other fuel properties have little effect on engine performance, although lower CN fuels produce a small increase in noise, smoke and CO emissions. Biodiesel blends increase NOX emissions and decreases CO and smoke emissions at high load, but otherwise have little effect on performance. At moderate load, higher CN fuels are more tolerant to EGR due to their better chemical reactivity at retarded injection timing, but all fuels produce comparable thermal efficiency at advanced combustion phasing regardless of EGR. In contrast to the high load conditions, there was no increase in NOX emissions for biodiesel at the moderate load condition. It is concluded that although higher CN does not significantly alter ignition delay at moderate to high loads it has a dominant influence on the acceptable injection timing range. Apart from CN effects, fuel oxygen content plays an independent role in reducing some emissions. It is therefore recommended that compensation for fuel ignitability and oxygen content be included in combustion control strategies to optimize emissions and performance of future diesel engines.
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Fuels, Engines and Emissions Research Center (FEERC); Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). National Transportation Research Center (NTRC)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- Work for Others (WFO)
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC05-00OR22725
- OSTI ID:
- 1039228
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 2012 SAE World Congress, Detroit, MI, USA, 20120424, 20120424
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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