Computational Simulation and Prediction on the Performance and Emissions of Dual Fuel Diesel Engine Operated With Pilot

Diesel Fuel and Hydrogen Gas.

Authors Ravikumar.T 7th sem , Mechanical, SIET Tumkur, Phone no. 7353908025 Email: Ravikumart.1990@gmail.com, Guided: Keerthi kumar
ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of computational simulation model in predicting the performance and emissions of hydrogen fuelled diesel engine. In this study, hydrogen was used as secondary fuel in a single cylinder diesel engine. The Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) three-dimensional simulation of the real engine conditions was conducted using CFD-FLUENT commercial code. The effects of hydrogen fuel on temperature and pressure of the charge inside the chamber were evaluated and compared to engine running on diesel fuel along with its emission. The pressure and temperature were assessed for the purpose of identifying the knocking phenomenon that might occur in hydrogen fuelled diesel engine that utilizing diesel as pilot fuel. The simulation results showed that the combustion pressure and temperature of the hydrogen fuelled diesel engine was higher than diesel (alone) fuelled engine. The amount of oxides of nitrogen generated during combustion was highest for hydrogen as compared to diesel due to increase in combustion temperature. The mass fraction of water was found to be in a larger amount inside the hydrogen fuelled combustion chamber as for diesel fuelled engine, the water vapour mass fraction was almost constant throughout the power stroke. From the simulation, it shows that the importance of computational simulation in combustion analysis of hydrogen fuelled diesel engine. The dramatically larger role of computing in the growth of the hydrogen fuelled diesel engine concept is a perfect illustration of the new trend. Computer and computer modelling are now mature, powerful tools and are playing roles in practical system design which limit the growth of problem size and complexity. INTRODUCTION Computer simulation of a wide range of phenomena in internal combustion engines has been a particularly fertile research area over the past 30 years. Beginning as a technical curiosity with minor impact on scientific research, computer simulation has grown rapidly to play a major role in virtually every science and engineering. In particular, computer modeling is now becomes very significant in combustion research especially in the internal combustion engine. Most of the currently available simulation software use CFD codes that rely on very simple models for combustion reactions and pollutants. Most codes rely on a single-step combustion mechanism where the fuel and oxidizer (usually oxygen only as nitrogen is inert) are directly converted into their final products of CO2 and H2O. No intermediate or products of partial combustion such as CO and H2 are taken into account. For NO analysis, CFD-FLUENT codes include models for thermal mechanism or also known extended Zeldovich, prompt-NO, fuel NO and re-burn. The thermal mechanism is extremely sensitive to temperature. It is active at temperatures over 1800 K in mixtures where stoichiometry is close to unity. Prompt NO is relevant in fuel-rich mixtures while the Fuel NO is for fuels containing a large amount of chemically bound nitrogen (NH3 or HCN) such as derived fuels. Heterogeneous combustion

such as the one occurring in diesel engines requires other mechanisms to simulate NOx in fuel lean mixtures. The use of hydrogen as a fuel for internal combustion engines either directly or indirectly is not new. Experiments have been done decades before to investigate the effectiveness of using hydrogen as a fuel. However, due to certain disadvantages, its progress to become the fuel of the future is slow. The depleting resources of fuel in the world today as well as the understanding of the need of the world environment requires the search for other types of fuel sources that may be renewed if possible. Fuels such as natural gas, liquid petroleum gas (LPG) and hydrogen are some of the alternative fuels to traditional ones that are fossil based such as diesel and gasoline. These conventional fuels have major disadvantage with regards to their exhaust emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx), unburned hydrocarbons (UHC), carbon dioxides (CO2) and particulate matter which are hazardous to humans and environment alike. The greenhouse effect is also one of the aftermaths from these gaseous emissions. The number of vehicles on the road increases everyday. With each vehicle, there exist a proportion of exhaust emissions, which consists of particles that are harmful to the environment and people. With the increase in numbers of vehicles, more fuel would be required to cater for the need of consumers. However, the conventional fuel for the engine such as diesel and gasoline are fossil based fuel and as such is not renewable. The availability of these fuels is fast diminishing and an alternative comparable fuel must be discovered quickly to avoid any possible future problems. Such a fuel should also be able to tackle the existing environmental problems of fossil fuel. Hydrogen is a very good alternative as a fuel, as it can never diminish. It is readily available and has no problem of excessive environment pollution. Hydrogen can be obtained from water and is practically carbon-free. The only known pollution derived from the combustion of hydrogen is NOx. This paper tries to predict the advantages of using hydrogen in a diesel engine in the perspective of its performance and emissions NUMERICAL SIMULATION METHOD The specifications of diesel engine used in the simulation are shown in Table 1. Table 1. Engine Specifications Engine type Single cylinder air cooled 4 stroke diesel engine

Displaced volume Bore Stroke Compression Ratio Engine speed Fuel

406 cc 86mm 70mm 21:1 2500 RPM 100%Diesel, 95% Hydrogen (+) 5 % Diesel

Figure 1: The volume mesh of the combustion chamber at the end of intake stroke In this study, CFD-FLUENT software was used to simulate the engine process. The boundaries of the combustion chamber (head, cylinder and piston) are assumed to be adiabatic. No details of the crevices and the piston rings are depicted as it is irrelevant to the whole purpose of the simulation. At BDC, the cylinder is composed of 976220 computational cells. Of these, 180997 are fixed tetrahedral cells which represent the clearance between the heads and piston at TDC. The other remaining cells (hexahedral cells) are either removed or added as the piston moves to and from TDC to BDC. The engine simulation covers the period from the opening of inlet port to the opening of exhaust port since all the important occurrences happen within this period. The species model of hydrogen-air reaction was used to account for combustion. The turbulence model used was the simple k-epsilon turbulence model. The two-equation solution was used as it requires less time and the probability of divergence is less likely to occur. However, the simulation did not ignore the effects of heat transfer and other important

combustion related models. Accordingly, the initial operating pressure and temperature were set to 101325 Pa and 300 K, respectively. For the purpose of comparison, both diesel and hydrogen fuel injection was simulated using the same engine. Figure 1 shows the volume mesh of the combustion chamber at the end of intake stroke. The computational simulation of diesel alone (100% diesel) was carried out earlier, since this will be the reference point of the analysis. The hydrogen gas (95% by mass) together with diesel fuel (5% by mass) was Computational Simulation and Prediction on the Performance and Emissions of Dual Fuel Diesel Engine Operated With Pilot Diesel Fuel and Hydrogen Gas ICCBT 2008 98 - F - (08) pp95-102 injected at the same timing for both cases. The injection was set at 350 to 370CA for a total of 20CA of injection duration. The engine was simulated at the speed of 2500 RPM.

Figure 2: Effect of hydrogen injection in diesel engine. (a) Pressure contour at 180 CA. (b) Comparison of combustion pressure in the engine. The combustion pressure inside the hydrogen fuelled combustion chamber was pronouncedly higher than inside the diesel alone. It can be seen from Figure 2 that the hydrogen fuel required more time to combust. The peak combustion pressure was achieved later for hydrogen than diesel fuel. The self-ignition temperature for hydrogen is 858 K [4] while diesel self-ignition temperature is 370 K [5]. Accordingly, the combustion of diesel is easier to achieve compared to hydrogen which would explain the relatively greater time required for its combustion (the maximum pressure occurred earlier in the diesel case than the hydrogen case). There was no indication of knock occurring in the chamber as there was no sudden rise in pressure as was the indication of a knock.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Figure 3: Effect of hydrogen injection in diesel engine. (a) Temperature contour at 350 CA (b) Comparison of combustion temperature in the engine. Temperature was comparatively higher for hydrogen than diesel, as shown in Figure 3. Although it takes a longer time for hydrogen to combust, the charge temperature became high once combustion was initiated. With a high temperature, this suggests that the NOx formation would be higher. NO formed via the Zeldovich mechanism best explains the NO formation. This mechanism is important in the formation of NO at high temperature combustion exceeding 1800 K [6]. Figure 4 shows the NO peaked at 365 CA when the combustion temperature exceeded 1800 K.

Figure 5: Mass fraction of water vapor in the combustion chamber at between 350 to 390 CA Figure 5 shows the amount of water vapor found in the combustion chamber during combustion inside the combustion chamber. The water vapor was found to be in a larger volume inside the hydrogen fuelled combustion chamber. In the diesel (alone) fuelled engine, the water mass fraction was almost constant. This can be the reason of the reduction of NOx in hydrogen fuelled after 375CA while the excess H2O will dissociate and absorb the heat of combustion thus lowered down the temperature, consequently the formation of NOx will be reduced. Furthermore, by having water vapor will increase the density inside the chamber. The increase in density of charge in the chamber increases the volumetric efficiency and, consequently increases the power performance of the engine. CONCLUSIONS The present computational study showed that hydrogen addition has a significant effect on the performance and emission of the diesel engine. This study will be a reliable guide for other researchers who intend to run an experimental hydrogen diesel engine analysis. From the analysis of the simulated data, it is revealed that dual fuel operation results in higher peak cylinder pressure compared to the one under normal diesel operation, which indicate that hydrogen is a better fuel than other alternative fuels as it has the possibility of generating greater power. As far as pollutant emissions are concerned, the addition of hydrogen fuel causes drastic increase of NO emission before dissociation and re-association of water vapor during power stroke of the engine. The introduction of the latest NOx control technologies, concurrently facilitate the use of hydrogen fuel in the future. REFERENCES 1.Gopal G, P. Srinivasa Rao, Gopalakrishnan K.V. and Murthy B.S. Use of hydrogen in dual-fuel engines. Int. Journal Hydrogen Energy. 2.M.Y.E. Selim. Sensitivity of dual fuel engine combustion and knocking limits to gaseous fuel composition. Energy conversion and Management 3. Hey wood John B. Internal Combustion Engine Fundamentals: McGraw Hill Book Company... Guided by: Keerthi kumar, Lecturer, SIET College, Tumkur.

The stochiometric combustion of hydrogen in the air produces only H2O and NOx [7]. For a lean operation combustion system such as in a compression ignition engine, the possibility of NOx to appear in the combustion product is high. The amount of NO generated during combustion was highest for hydrogen due to high combustion temperature. However, more pronounced amount of NO was generated 15 CA after hydrogen was injected and the amount went down rapidly once injection stopped. This phenomenon indicates that the time required for ignition of hydrogen was delayed after its injection Computational Simulation and Prediction on the Performance and Emissions of Dual Fuel Diesel Engine Operated With Pilot Diesel Fuel and Hydrogen Gas