NUMERICAL STUDY ON IN-CYLINDER CONVECTIVE HEAT TRANSFER OF A BIOETHANOL FUELLED ENGINE by Wee Li Khuan Session 2012/2013

Final year research project report submitted to the Faculty of Engineering University of Malaya in partial fulfillment of the requirement to the Bachelors degree of Engineering

DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING ENGINEERING FACULTY UNIVERSITY OF MALAYA June 2013

ABSTRACT Spark ignition (SI) engine performances depend strongly on the heat transfer from the combustion gas to the wall in the combustion chamber, especially the convective heat transfer. Thus, the model governing the in-cylinder gas side convective heat transfer of an engine is very important in prediction of the engine performances and it can be developed through the evaluation of the coefficient of heat transfer. This study aimed to contribute to the knowledge in this field for the case of bioethanol fuelled engine. Bioethanol appears to be a promising renewable automotive fuel at this time where the world energy demand and pollution due to CO2 emissions are mankinds greatest concern, making this study indeed very important as one of the future initiatives. With nearly 20 million bioethanol operating FlexFuel Vehicles (FFV) on the road worldwide today and millions more are coming, this study will initiates further researches on justifying the technical and economic viability of commercial scale production of bioethanol, and shaping future infrastructure development project and services in Malaysia. In this study, simulation approach was applied where MATLAB was used as the simulation tool. Two optimized choice of correlations were applied for the evaluation of heat transfer coefficient, which are the Hohenbergs and Eichelbergs correlation. In both correlations, same parameters including the in-cylinder volume, mass burned fraction, in-cylinder pressure, and in-cylinder temperature are required and were determined from the simulation of combustion process with engine geometries from the real engine. According to the simulation results, bioethanol fuelled engine has a better combustion efficiency, higher in-cylinder pressure, and higher in-cylinder temperature, proving this engine to have better performances and cleaner. The results also show that the convective heat transfer of a bioethanol fuelled engine changes proportionally with the in-cylinder pressure and in-cylinder temperature. From the comparison graphs, bioethanol fuelled engine has a higher in-cylinder convective heat transfer from the start of the combustion process until its peak, but is lower during the end of the combustion process if compared to gasoline fuelled engine.