Energy Conversion and Management 42 (2001) 10331045

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Eects of diluent admissions and intake air temperature in exhaust gas recirculation on the emissions of an indirect injection dual fuel engine
G.H. Abd-Alla *, H.A. Soliman, O.A. Badr, M.F. Abd-Rabbo
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Shoubra Faculty of Engineering, Zagazig University, 108 Shoubra Street, Cairo, Egypt Received 2 November 1999; accepted 15 May 2000

Abstract The operation of Diesel engines on gaseous fuels, commonly known as dual fuel engines, uses Diesel fuel as the pilot fuel and gaseous fuel (methane and sometimes propane in the present work) as the main fuel. The gaseous fuel was inducted in the intake manifold to mix with the intake air. The investigation was conducted on a high speed indirect injection (Ricardo-E6) dual fuel engine and was concerned with the eects of exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) on the dual fuel engine combustion and emissions, in particular, the eects of intake air temperature and diluent admissions (N2 and CO2 ) on combustion and emissions. The use of diluents to displace oxygen (O2 ) in the intake air resulted in a reduction in the O2 supplied to the engine, increased the inlet charge thermal capacity (thermal eect) and, potentially, CO2 and N2 participated in the combustion process (chemical eect). In a separate series of tests, the temperature of the engine inlet charge was raised gradually in order to simulate the eect of mixing hot EGR with the engine inlet gaseous fuel air mixture. It was found that the admission of diluents resulted in reductions in the exhaust oxides of nitrogen (NOX ). Higher inlet charge temperature increases the exhaust NOX but reduces the unburned hydrocarbon emissions. Finally, when carbon dioxide was added to the inlet gaseous fuel air charge, large reductions in NOX were observed. 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Exhaust gas recirculation; NOX emission; CO2 diluent; N2 diluent; Hydrocarbons; Intake temperature; Dual fuel engine; Pilot fuel

Corresponding author. Address: Al-Ain Technical School, P.O. Box 17835, Al-Ain, United Arab Emirates. Tel.: +971-3-784-4096; fax: +971-3-784-6110. E-mail address: ghabdala@emirates.net.ae (G.H. Abd-Alla). 0196-8904/01/$ - see front matter 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 1 9 6 - 8 9 0 4 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 7 2 - 8

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1. Introduction The use of exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) has become a popular way of reducing NOX levels in internal combustion engines. Beatrice et al. [1] performed some experiments on an experimental 10 kW rated power DI diesel engine to study the inuence of high EGR rate on engine emissions. He found that at EGR rates of about 60%, a large reduction of NOX is obtained, together with a reduction of soot emissions, while an increase of HC emissions is detected. Mozafari [2] used a computer simulation model to assess the eects of EGR on SI engine operating conditions. It was found that EGR lowers the NOX concentration in the exhaust gas. It also lowered the specic fuel consumption and decreased the heat transfer from the cylinder contents to the surrounding surface. Tao et al. [3] measured the performance and emission characteristics of a single cylinder two stroke Diesel engine with direct injection of natural gas entrained with pilot Diesel ignition. He used the EGR system and found that at high load, where the NOX emission problem is most serious, a substantial reduction in NOX emission was obtained. However, the use of EGR also incurs penalties, including increased specic fuel consumption and decreased heat transfer from the cylinder contents to the surrounding surface [4,5]. The application of EGR can also aect adversely the lubricating oil quality and engine durability [68]. Practically, the quantity of EGR is limited to a point beyond which the combustion temperature and the ame speed are low enough to prevent successful engine operation. Reader et al. [9] used EGR for the straight Diesel engine and found that as the carbon dioxide levels are increased, the combustion noise levels also increase but the eect is more noticeable at certain engine speeds. It is suggested that the disadvantages of using EGR in both spark ignition and compression ignition engines (e.g. noise levels and wear of piston rings due to relatively higher concentrations of SO2 ) can be avoided in dual fuel engines. The thermal eect of the recirculated exhaust gases is reected in changing the temperature of the mixture. When EGR is mixed with the inlet mixture supplied to the engine, the temperature of the inlet charge to the engine increases. This can signicantly aect the compressed charge temperature and the combustion process [10]. This eect will be considered in some detail in this paper. One of the main features of the combustion process in homogeneous charge compression ignition engines, including dual fuel engines when operating on very lean mixtures at light loads, is that part of the gaseous fuel and some of the active species produced in the combustion process can survive in substantial concentrations to the exhaust stage. When some of these surviving species are introduced into the intake mixture through recirculation of the exhaust gases, they can have signicant chemical and thermal roles in the ignition and combustion processes of the subsequent cycle. The kinetic eect of these recirculated gases may result in increasing the activity of the preignition reactions of the premixed gaseous fuel air charge and can have a profound eect on the overall performance of the engine. The combined eect of active species such as H, O and OH produced in the high temperature combustion process and found in the exhaust gases can have a signicant role in the preignition reactions of subsequent cycles. 2. Experimental setup The present study was conducted on a Ricardo-E6 engine retrotted to allow operation with gaseous fuels in addition to the normal Diesel operation. The engine is a single cylinder, indirect

G.H. Abd-Alla et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 42 (2001) 10331045 Table 1 General specications of Ricardo-E6 engine Item Type Number of cylinders Bore Stroke Swept volume Maximum speed Minimum speed Maximum power Maximum cylinder pressure Compression ratio Injection timing Specication Four stroke 1 76.2 mm (3 in.) 111.1 mm (4.375 in.) 0.507 l (31 in.3 ) 3000 rpm 900 rpm 9 kW ! naturally aspirated 14 kW ! (0.5 bar) supercharged 150 bar 21:1 2545 BTDC

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injection, four stroke, water cooled engine with a bore of 76.2 mm (3.0 in.), a stroke of 111.1 mm (4.375 in.) and a swept volume of 507 cm3 (31 in.3 ). Table 1 gives the general specications of the Ricardo-E6 engine. Two poppet valves are set vertically in the head and are operated by an overhead camshaft. In addition to a special cavity cut into the piston crown, the engine has a comet MKV compression swirl combustion chamber tted to the cylinder head. The swirl chamber in the head has a top half of spherical form, and the lower half is a truncated cone which communicates with the cylinder by means of a narrow passage or throat. The second part consists of special cavities cut into the crown of the piston. The lower half of the combustion chamber containing the throat is thermally insulated from the rest of the cylinder head. During the compression stroke, the fuel air mixture is forced into the comet chamber with a swirl motion. The test bed is shown in Fig. 1. The intake air ow was measured by a linear viscous ow meter, and its temperature was controlled by an electric heater. Meanwhile, high pressure cylinders containing 100% chemically pure grade methane and propane were used to fuel the engine with

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the test setup.

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the tested gaseous fuel. A system of regulating valve, two metering valves, damping chamber, orice meter and piezo electric dierential pressure transducer was used to control and measure the ow rate of the gaseous fuel which was injected in the air upstream of the intake manifold. Then, the intake temperature becomes the gaseous fuel air mixture temperature, and by heating the intake air, the intake mixture temperature will be increased. An engine driven positive displacement injection pump with a pintle injection nozzle was used to inject, atomize and spray the pilot Diesel fuel within the fuel air mixture. A microprocessor based ow meter was used to measure the relatively low ow rates of the Diesel (pilot) fuel. The meter, which works on a ``thermal pulse'' and ``time of ight'' technique, is capable of good accuracy measuring very low ow rates (0.02 ml/min). In order to conduct a preliminary study on the eects of EGR on the performance of the tested dual fuel engine, the system shown schematically in Fig. 2 was used to control the EGR percentage. The system, containing a steel wool particulate trap lter, a control valve and exible pipes, was thermally insulated. The temperature of the recirculated exhaust gases was measured just before mixing with the intake air gaseous fuel mixture. The reported percentages of EGR were based on volume and involved errors up to 10%. The engine exhaust gas stream was sampled continuously via a heated sample line with, UHC, NOX and CO emissions measured by a heated ame ionization detector, a heated chemiluminescent analyzer and a non-dispersive infrared analyzer, respectively. In addition, oxygen was measured by using a paramagnetic method. The output signals of the above mentioned instruments, as well as the engine speed and torque, were fed to a data acquisition system. In addition to such instruments, a computer interfaceable digital storage oscilloscope was used to record and analyze the cylinder pressure-time data from which engine misring and knocking were detected. Table 2 gives the list of average uncertainties of some measured and calculated parameters.

Fig. 2. Schematic arrangement of the EGR system.

G.H. Abd-Alla et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 42 (2001) 10331045 Table 2 Average uncertainties of some measured and calculated parameters Parameter Air mass ow rate Gaseous fuel mass ow rate Diesel fuel mass ow rate Total equivalence ratio Engine speed Engine torque Temperatures Mean eective pressure Brake power Thermal eciency Uncertainty (%) 4 6 5 7 2 5 <1 5 5.5 7

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3. Results and discussion 3.1. Eects of CO2 and N2 on exhaust emissions During the operation of dual fuel engines, admission of some diluents, such as CO2 or N2 , can aect the ignition behavior of the pilot fuel and the preignition reactivity of the gaseous fuel air charge very signicantly. The increase of the diluent concentrations will decelerate the reaction rates of the mixture and, thus, produce lower temperatures. In such a case, ame propagation may not be sustained within relatively leaner mixtures. This can possibly increase the unburned hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide emissions in the exhaust. To study such eects, two types of diluents (CO2 and N2 ) were injected into the intake air. The volume concentrations of N2 diluent used in this set of experiments were 5%, 19% and 30% of the intake air. In addition, the limiting concentration of N2 causing complete quenching and misring was found to be 43%. The concentrations of CO2 diluent used in an other set of experiments were 1.9%, 4.1%, 5.8% of the intake air. It should be noted that the attempt to increase the concentration of CO2 up to 12% caused damage to the cylinder head gasket due to freezing of CO2 in the form of ice particulates. Through the experimental observations, it was shown that the minimum ow rate of pilot fuel required to initiate ignition was about 0.35 kg/h for N2 diluent and about 0.4 kg/h for CO2 . These sets of experiments were performed at a xed speed of 1000 rpm, xed injection timing of pilot fuel at 25 BTDC and using methane as the gaseous fuel. Fig. 3 shows the variations of carbon monoxide with measured torque for dierent values of diluent concentrations. It can be seen that increasing the diluent concentration increases the carbon monoxide emissions. With the increase of diluent concentration, the ignition delay of the pilot fuel increases which causes a delayed start of combustion relative to the top dead center. Because of this, the cylinder charge temperature and pressure decrease and can lead to poor combustion which, consequently, lead to an increase in carbon monoxide emissions. The local concentration of oxygen, maximum charge temperature and sucient time for the oxygennitrogen reaction determine the reaction kinetics for NOX production. In dual fuel engines, the concentration of diluents and, consequently, the lower charge temperature in the cycle plays a role in production of NOX . Fig. 4 shows the variations of oxygen concentration in the

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Fig. 3. Variations of carbon monoxide concentration with measured torque for dierent values of CO2 diluent concentrations.

Fig. 4. Variations of oxygen concentration in the exhaust with measured torque for dierent values of N2 diluent concentrations.

exhaust with measured torque for dierent values of N2 diluent concentration. It can be shown that the oxygen concentration available for reactions with nitrogen atoms reduces by increasing the load. This reduction in oxygen concentration leads to reduced NOX reactions. Fig. 5 shows typically the experimental results of NOX emissions with measured torque for three dierent

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Fig. 5. Variations of NOX concentration with measured torque for dierent values of CO2 diluent concentrations.

values of N2 diluent concentrations. The production of NOX is inuenced markedly by both maximum charge temperature in the cylinder and the equivalence ratio. Poor combustion due to increasing the N2 diluent concentration leads to a reduction of NOX produced due to lowering of the maximum cycle temperature and oxygen concentration. Decreasing the compression temperature and, hence, the ame temperature due to increasing the diluent concentration has the clear tendency of retarding the formation of oxides of nitrogen. For the same measured torque, increasing the CO2 diluent concentration required more gaseous fuel to be burned, and this leads to increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide measured in the exhaust as shown in Fig. 6.

4. Eect of inlet charge temperature In order to study the eect of increasing the engine inlet charge temperature, the engine was run by keeping the following parameters constant: engine speed was 1000 rpm, injection timing was 25 BTDC, pilot fuel ow rate was 0.15 kg/h and the main fuel was propane. The increase of the intake temperatures will accelerate the reaction rates of the mixture, widen its ammability limits and sustain ame propagation within relatively leaner mixtures. Thus, increasing the intake temperature will produce higher charge temperatures which lead to propagating the ame successfully through the gaseous fuel air mixture. This can possibly reduce the carbon monoxide in the exhaust as shown in Fig. 7 as a function of the total equivalence ratio. Fig. 8 shows that increasing the inlet charge temperature had a benecial eect in reducing unburned hydrocarbon emissions. The results suggest that this may mainly be the result of decreasing ignition delay. At very low loads, the ame (if any) cannot propagate successfully, which

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Fig. 6. Variations of exhaust carbon dioxide concentration with measured torque for dierent values of CO2 diluent concentrations.

Fig. 7. Variations of carbon monoxide concentration with total equivalence ratio for dierent values of intake temperatures.

leads to increasing the unburned hydrocarbon (while the actual percentage of unburned fuel decreases) with the total equivalence ratio. The intake charge temperature and, consequently, the maximum charge temperature in the cycle plays a role in production of NOX . Fig. 9 shows typically the variations of NOX with total

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Fig. 8. Variations of unburned hydrocarbon concentration with total equivalence ratio for dierent values of intake temperatures.

Fig. 9. Variations of NOX concentration with total equivalence ratio for dierent values of intake temperatures.

equivalence ratio for three dierent values of intake temperature. The production of NOX is inuenced markedly by both the intake temperature and the equivalence ratio. The penalty of improving the combustion process by increasing the intake temperature is the increase of NOX produced due to increasing the maximum cycle temperature with almost the same oxygen concentration. Increasing the compression temperature and, hence, ame temperature due to

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increasing the intake temperature has the clear tendency of advancing the formation of oxides of nitrogen.

5. Eect of exhaust gas recirculation The main features of the combustion process in dual fuel engines at light loads are that part of the gaseous fuel and some of the active species produced in the combustion process can survive in substantial concentrations to the exhaust stage. When some of these surviving species are introduced into the intake mixture through recirculation of the exhaust gases, they can play signicant chemical and thermal roles in the ignition and combustion processes of the subsequent cycle. The kinetic eect of these recirculated gases may result in increasing the activity of the preignition reactions of the premixed gaseous fuel air charge and can have a profound eect on the overall performance of the engine. The combined eect of active species, such as H, O and OH produced in the high temperature combustion process and found in the exhaust gases can have a signicant role in the preignition reactions of subsequent cycles. In order to study the eect of EGR, the engine was run by keeping the following parameters constant: engine speed was 1000 rpm, injection timing was 25 BTDC, pilot fuel ow rate was 0.15 kg/h, main fuel was methane or propane and EGR ratios were 17%, 33% and 50%. The EGR ratio is dened as the volumetric ratio of the recirculated gas to the total charge induced into the cylinder. In the experiment, EGR ratios of 17%, 33% and 50% by volume ow rate were tested at dierent loads (until the engine knocked). Such values of EGR ratios are very approximate and may have uncertainty up to 10%. Figs. 10 and 11 show the variations of un-

Fig. 10. Variations of unburned hydrocarbon concentration with total equivalence ratio for dierent values of EGR ratios for methane.

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Fig. 11. Variations of unburned hydrocarbon concentration with total equivalence ratio for dierent values of EGR ratios for propane.

burned hydrocarbons with EGR ratio for a wide range of total equivalence ratios. It can be seen that the unburned hydrocarbon emissions decrease as the EGR ratio increases. One reason for this is that a portion of the unburned gases in the exhaust from the previous cycle is recirculated and burned in the succeeding cycle. Also, the presence of radicals can help to initiate the combustion process, especially with the increase of intake charge temperature due to mixing with exhaust gases. On the other hand, the diluents try to stop the reactions, but the combined eects of

Fig. 12. Variations of NOX concentration with total equivalence ratio for dierent values of EGR ratios for methane.

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Fig. 13. Variations of NOX concentration with total equivalence ratio for dierent values of EGR ratios for propane.

radicals and intake temperature are dominant. Thus, the unburned hydrocarbons decrease with increasing EGR ratios. The net eect of EGR (higher temperature, shorter ignition delay, lower oxygen concentration and presence of diluents) results in a reduction of NOX formation as shown in Figs. 12 and 13. The engine tests have demonstrated that NOX is greatly suppressed when the O2 concentration in the combustion chamber is reduced (dilution eect). The question arises, therefore, as to why the reduction in O2 concentration in the cylinder suppresses NOX emission. A possible explanation for this eect is by assuming that the combustion takes place in regions where the oxygenfuel ratio is at stoichiometric. Using EGR, some of the O2 in the cylinder are replaced by CO2 when the local O2 concentration in the cylinder becomes lower. With the local O2 concentration reduced, a given amount of fuel will have to diuse over a wider area before sucient O2 is encountered for a stoichiometric mixture to be formed. 6. Conclusions (1) The introduction of CO2 in the inlet charge resulted in a reduction in NOX and an increase in the unburned hydrocarbons. (2) Chemical eects resulting from the dissociation of the CO2 introduced into the inlet charge were responsible for a moderate reduction in NOX . (3) Increasing the inlet charge temperature resulted in an increase in NOX and a reduction in unburned hydrocarbons emissions brought about mainly by the reduction in ignition delay that accompanied the increase in inlet charge temperature. (4) Increasing the intake charge temperature resulted in improved combustion characteristics due to the reduction in ignition delay. Therefore, brake horse power and thermal eciency were increased, and carbon monoxide and unburned hydrocarbons emissions were decreased. Mean-

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while, NOX emissions increased due to the corresponding increase in maximum charge temperature in the cylinder. Thus, the performance of a dual fuel engine can be improved at low load by increasing the intake charge temperature. At high loads, however, increasing the intake charge temperature leads to engine knock. (5) During the admission of diluents, it was shown that the minimum ow rate of pilot fuel required to initiate ignition was about 0.35 kg/h for the N2 diluent and about 0.4 kg/h for the CO2 . Poor combustion due to increasing the diluent concentration leads to reduction of the produced NOX due to lowering of the maximum cycle temperature and oxygen concentration.

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