Proceedings International Hydrogen Energy Congress and Exhibition IHEC 2005 Istanbul, Turkey, 13-15 July 2005

Syngas As A Fuel For IC And Diesel Engines: Efficiency And Harmful Emissions Cut-off
Vladimir Sobyanin, Vladislav Sadykov1, Valeriy Kirillov, Valeriy Kuzmin, Nikolay Kuzin, Zakhar Vostrikov, Eugeniy Smirnov, Anatoliy Sorokin*, Oleg Brizitskiy**, Valeriy Terentyev**, Aleksandr Khristolyubov**, Vladislav Luksho***, Andrei Afanasiev**** Boreskov Institute of Catalysis, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia; *OAO Avtovaz, Toliatti, Russia; ** VNIIEF, Sarov, Russia; ****NAMI, Moscow, Russia; Toliatti State University.
1

Boreskov Inst. of Catalysis, pr. Lavrentieva, 5, 630090, Novosibirsk, Russia E-mail: Sadykov@catalysis.nsk.su

ABSTRACT This work presents results of systematic bench tests for IC (VAZ-2111, 2114) and diesel (D245.12) engines fed by the liquid or gas fuel when a part or even all fuel was replaced by syngas generated from the same fuel in compact syngas generators. Those generators were designed and manufactured at Boreskov Institute of catalysis (BIC) in collaboration with VNIIEF (Sarov). They are equipped with proprietary monolithic or structured heat-conducting catalysts able to efficiently convert hydrocarbons into syngas by selective oxidation with air at short contact times ensuring compact syngas generators design. Extended tests revealed that spark ignition (SI) engines can safely operate in the idle mode on the ultra-lean syngas air mixtures provided spark timing is tuned, thus ensuring ultra-low (~10 ppm) emissions of CHx and NOx along with noticeable (up to 30%) improvement in the thermal efficiency. Under load, operation on the mixture of syngas and pilot (gas or liquid) fuel also results in pronounced decrease in NOx, CO and CHx emissions in the optimum ranges of the oxygen excess (). However, in this case improvement in the fuel efficiency is small (if any) and in the ultra-lean limit CO and CHx emission increases due to decline of the cylinder peak temperature causing incomplete combustion. In the case of diesel engine, the level of NOx emissions was cut at least by several times in the ultra-lean limit, though CHx and CO emission increases, while the fuel efficiency declines. Comparison with published data revealed that using syngas instead of hydrogen causes both positive and negative effects, the latter can be overcome by optimizing performance of syngas generators, tuning engines operational parameters and applying simple oxidation catalytic converters. Keywords: Syngas as fuel additive; Spark ignition engines; Diesel engine; Bench tests; NOx, CHx, CO emission; Fuel efficiency. 1. INTRODUCTION Hydrogen is considered as the most attractive fuel for the future since it produces no green-house gases such as carbon dioxide, ensures zero NOx emissions when converted in fuel cells and may be produced by variety of techniques from renewable sources. Even near future application of hydrogen as the primary fuel or as the additive in a fuel mixture in SI or diesel engines has a number of attractive features (Akansu, 2004). Due to unresolved economic and technical problems
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(the absence of developed hydrogen infrastructure, storage issues, difficulties of on-board production of pure hydrogen etc), the operation of engines on pure hydrogen fuel remains questionable (Karim, 2003). In addition, utilization of pure hydrogen as a fuel in SI engines has been hampered by pre-ignition due to the undesirable combustion of the air/fuel charge in the intake manifold. The lean operation mode deals with this problem, but NOx emissions are rather high (up to 3000 ppm) and can be suppressed only by the exhaust gas recirculation (Heffel, 2003). On the other hand, when hydrogen is used as an additive to natural gas, gasoline or diesel oil, the wider operational mixture limits and faster flame propagation rates allow very fuel-lean operation which favors higher thermal efficiencies and lower emissions, at least of carbon oxides and hydrocarbons (Bauer and Forest, 2001; Kumar et al, 2003. Operation of engines on lean fuel mixtures even without hydrogen is well-known to have a number of attractive features such as low likelihood of knock, reduced emissions (especially NOx), possibility to use higher compression ratios while reducing the heat transfer. However, there are a number of difficulties associated with the lean burn operation. These arise primarily from the associated slower flame propagation, less complete combustion, increased cyclic variations and even the occasional flame failure. These contribute to poor engine power output and excessive emissions that may be encountered with lean operation (Hoekstra et al, 1995). Addition of a small amount of hydrogen having a much faster rate of burning than hydrocarbons allows to deal with this problem. As dependent upon the type of engine, hydrogen content, equivalence ratio and engine operation parameters, quite different results concerning emissions of harmful components were obtained. Thus, for addition of hydrogen to a gasoline-fuelled SI engine, DAndrea et al (2004) demonstrated that NOx emissions increase with the hydrogen content under lean conditions due to increase of peak cylinder temperatures. In these studies, emissions of unburned hydrocarbons and CO were decreased. In contrary, Stebar and Parks (1974) in a single-cylinder engine tests with addition of 10 mass. % of hydrogen to gasoline demonstrated at lean limit with the equivalence ratio = 0.55 NOx emissions reduced to nearly minimal levels while HC emissions increased. Similarly, Hoekstra et al (1995) for V-8, Chevrolet 350 engine running on the mixture of the natural gas and hydrogen (hythane) proved that ultra-low emissions of NOx can be achieved with only a moderate increase of HC emissions, while in the survey of Akansu et al (2004) utilization of natural gas-hydrogen mixtures in internal combustion engines was shown to enhance NOx emission and hamper HC, CO and CO2 emissions. When a part of fuel was converted into syngas either in catalytic fuel converters (MacDonald, 1974; Jamal et al, 1996; Tsolakis et al, 2003) or plasmatrons (Bromberg et al, 2001) combined with the exhaust gas recirculation and added to the pilot fuel, the ultra-low NOx, CO and HC emissions were ensured. However, up to date the progress in this promising direction was hampered by the absence of simple, efficient and reliable syngas generators for on-board application. Successive design of such generators equipped with structured catalysts for selective oxidation/autothermal reforming of gas and liquid fuels in Boreskov Institute of catalysis in cooperation with VNIIEF (Sarov) (Kirillov et al, 2004; Pavlova et al, 2003; Sadykov et al, 2005) allowed to start in Russia studies of the effect of syngas addition to gas or liquid fuels for different types of engines. This paper present recently obtained results of these studies carried out in cooperation between Research Institutions, Togliatti University and Russian car-producing company (Avtovaz). 2. EXPERIMENTAL 2.1. Syngas generators Two types of syngas generators were used in these studies. The first one is of the axial design and is equipped with the monolithic honeycomb catalysts comprised of fechraloy foil substrate with supported active components on the bases of complex fluorite-like metal oxides promoted by lanthanum nickelate and platinum group metals. The details of the catalysts design and their performance in the reactions of selective oxidation/autothermal reforming of methane and/or liquid fuels (gasoline, isooctane) are presented elsewhere (Bobrova et al, 2005; Pavlova et al,
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2003; Sadykov et al, 2005). The catalysts (three pieces with the overall volume 300 cc) along with front and back-end thermal shields were placed into a tubular stainless-steel reactor of 1 L volume with required housing and thermal insulation. For the rapid (within 1 min) start-up, the catalysts were heated by passing the electric current through the specially designed fechraloy foil based catalytic heater situated at the inlet part of the catalytic layer. To perform experiments with gasoline, specially designed system of fuel supply and evaporation was manufactured and successfully tested. Stable performance of this system ensuring efficient evaporation of a liquid fuel and its mixing with air without undesirable soot formation while working on the reformulated gasoline was demonstrated. The radial type syngas reactor is designed as a cylinder which encloses a gas-distribution device made of a perforated tube plugged at one end which is used to feed a methane-air mixture. The structured catalyst bed is formed of flat and corrugated porous catalyst strips comprised of 12.5% GIAP 3 catalyst (7% Ni/Al2O3) + 85.5% Ni + 2% Cr powder deposited onto reinforced steel net. These strips are wound around the gas-distribution tube and sintered with it in an inert atmosphere. The strips are arranged in such a way that the winds of each layer are overlapped by those of the next one thus forming a structure consisting of radial and longitudinal channels. The reactor volume including the gas-distribution tube is 1600 cc. During reactor start-up, the catalyst bed is preheated to 600-700 C by the electric heating unit or with a flame burner. As the temperature inside the catalyst bed rises, the heating is stopped, and the natural gas-air mixture (gas/air excess 0.28-0.47) is directed to the gas distribution tube. Syngas composition and maximum capacity of syngas generators are given in Table 1. Table 1: Characteristics of syngas generators Type of Max generators/fuel capacity, m3(CO +H2/h) Axial flow type reactor/gasoline Axial flow type reactor/natural gas Radial type reactor/natural gas 10 10 Averaged syngas composition (dry gas), % H2 22-23 32 CO 24-25 15 CO2 1-3 1-1.5 N2 ~50 ~50 CH4 0.4-1.5 4-8 H2O 0.5-2.0 0.5-2.0

10

30

12

5-6

~50

4-8

2-5

At this stage of experiments, no exhaust gas recirculation into the syngas generators was attempted, which will be the subject of subsequent studies. Syngas produced by generators was passed through coolers and mixed with the air supplied to engines air tract. 2.2. Engines For experiments, next types of engines were used: 1) Gasoline spark ignition engine VAZ 2111, four cylinders, four stroke, displacement 1500 cc, compression ratio 9.5.

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2) Natural gas spark ignition engine VAZ 2114, four cylinders, four stroke, displacement 1500 cc, compression ratio 12.0, additionally equipped with the system for the natural gas feeding of LPIGAZ (Poland). 3) Compression ignition diesel D-245.12 water-cooled engine, four cylinders, four stroke, bore & stroke 80x120 mm, brake power up to 50 kW, compression ratio 15.0. 2.3. Bench specification Bench stand was equipped with brake arrangement connected with the engine by a clutch or a driveshaft; scale head to determine the engine torque; system of storage and feeding of fuels to engines; system of engine cooling; set of sensors to measure engine and surrounding parameters; analyzers to measure concentrations of components in the syngas and exhaust; system for transformation of the measured parameters from analog into digital forms and transfer of the obtained information to the computer to process the measured data. Both engine torque and rotation speed on the output shaft are determined using strain gage transducers of the dynamometric clutch converting the engine torque on the shaft into an electric analog signal within the standard range of 10 V. To measure air consumption, a Ricardo flowmeter (frequency range within 0-10 Hz) is used. A FG 100 gravimetric fuel-flow meter measures fuel consumption of the engine. A Yanako gas analyzer was used to analyze composition of exhaust gases to determine concentrations of , x, 2 and NOx. Concentrations of CO and CO2 were determined by a non-disperse IR detector, hydrocarbons were detected by a flame-ionization gas analyzer, and NOx by a chemiluminescence analyzer. Relative accuracy of the gas analyzers was +3 % for any range and any measured component. The bench is equipped with Bosch diagnostic devices providing information on the state of feed systems and engine ignition system. A computer performed the process of testing as well as accumulation and analysis of the data on engine operation. 2.4. Regimes of engines testing Gasoline SI VAZ 2111 engine was tested in next regimes: Idle mode, speed 850 rpm. Engine was fed with gasoline (set 1), syngas produced from the natural gas (set 2) or syngas produced from gasoline (set 3). II) Load mode, speed 3280 rpm, brake mean effective pressure Pe =0.33MPa. Engine was fed with gasoline (set 1) or with the mixture of gasoline and syngas produced from the natural gas (set 2, syngas share up to 30-60 mass %) or from gasoline (set 3, syngas share up to 30-40%). Natural gas spark ignition engine VAZ 2114 was tested in next regimes: I) Idle mode, speed 850 rpm. Engine operates on the mixture of syngas and natural gas. To vary the oxygen excess, syngas supply was kept constant at 0.626 m3/h, air supply was varied from 6.5 to 9.4 kg/h, while the natural gas supply was changed from 0.694 to 0.081 m3/h. Load mode, speed 3280 rpm, brake mean effective pressure Pe =0.33MPa. The syngas supply was kept constant at 2.6 m3/h, natural gas supply was slightly varied in the range of 3.2-3.9 m3/h, while the air supply was varied from 62 to 115 kg/h. I)

II)

To optimize performance of SI engines operating on lean mixtures, spark timing was increased up to 60o BTDC (before top dead center) at the lean limit to compensate inevitable reduction in the total amount of energy release in charge. The D-245.12 diesel engine was tested at a constant speed of 1300 rpm. The operation was tested in two modes:
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I) At standard feed of a diesel + air mixture; II) At partial substitution of diesel oil with syngas produced from the natural gas. Feeding of the diesel oil to the engine was tuned to keep the speed of engine at 1300 rpm, as in the first mode. In these experiments, the mass ratio of the natural gas (converted to syngas) to that of diesel oil was varied from ~ 1 at ~ 1 to ~ 3 at ~ 0.2, while the air supply was varied rather moderately in the range of 150-230 kg/h. With the increase of the fuel supply, the engine torque (tr) was varied from 17 to 360 N*m, while the engine brake power (Ne) changed from 2.3 to 50 kW. 3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 3.1. Gasoline engine In the idle mode, operation of engine with syngas as single fuel allowed to extend the lean operation range at least up to = 2.8 (though operation in the leaner range is quite possible) while keeping the same engine speed N=850 rpm (Fig. 1-3). When operating on syngas, the NOx content in the exhaust strongly declines (Fig. 1a), no clear effect of hydrogen content in syngas generated from NG or gasoline (Table 1) being revealed. Fuel consumption Q is lower for the case of operation on syngas (Fig. 1b), which demonstrates increased fuel efficiency for 25-45%. For CHx emissions, even more striking effect of the engine operation on syngas is observed (Fig. 2). For gasoline as fuel, CHx content is at minimum at the stoichiometry point steeply increasing with the oxygen excess, which is explained by decreasing combustion rate due to approaching the lean-burn limit of stable engine performance (Hoekstra et al, 1995). For syngas as fuel, CHx content is much lower (Fig. 2) being either independent upon the oxygen excess (syngas produced from gasoline) or slightly increasing with (syngas produced from the natural gas). In the latter case, it is explained by a higher content of residual methane in syngas obtained from the natural gas (Table 1).
120 100
NOx, ppm a
1 2 3

24

60 40 20 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 Oxygen excess, 3.0

Q, MJ/h

80

1 2 3

20

16

12 0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

2.5

3.0

Oxygen excess,

Figure 1: NOx content in exhaust (a) and fuel consumption (b) versus for VAZ 2111 engine in the idle regime for different fuel mixtures (sets 1-3) As for CO emissions (Fig. 3), in the idle regime at in the range of 1.0-1.4, CO content appears to be independent upon the type of fuel (gasoline or syngas) or hydrogen content in syngas. In the ultra lean region (>1.6), CO content increases which is explained by incomplete combustion due to the average cylinder temperature decline (Akansu, 2004). In this case, as expected, a higher CO emission is observed for syngas produced from gasoline with a higher CO content (Table 1). Hence, in contrary to experiments with pure hydrogen - gasoline mixtures (DAndrea et al, 2004), for ultra-lean charge, addition of syngas does not help to cut CO emissions in the idle mode.

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In part, it can be explained by spark timing increasing with up to 55o BTDC in the ultra- lean limit which agrees with the same trend observed for the methane-hydrogen mixture as a fuel (Karim et al, 1996). This results in decreasing the exhaust temperature (Jamal et al, 1996), and, hence, decreasing the rate of CO and CHx oxidation at high . The increase of spark timing
1000 800
CHx, ppm
CHx1 CHx2 CHx3

600 400 200 0 0.8 1.2

1.6 2.0 2.4 Oxygen excess,

2.8

Figure 2: CHx content in exhaust versus for VAZ 2111 engine in the idle regime for different fuel mixtures (sets 1-3)

5
CO content, %

a
1 2 3

CO content, %

4 3 2 1 0 0.8 1.2

1 2 3

1
L

0 0.8 1.2 1.6 Oxygen excess,

1.6 2.0 2.4 Oxygen excess,

2.8

2.0

Figure 3: CO content in exhaust versus for VAZ 2111 engine in idle regime (a) and under load (b) for 1-3 sets of experiments. For set 2, points marked by L or H correspond to a lower or higher share of syngas in the fuel mixture (see text) usually decreases the fuel efficiency as well (Jamal et al, 1996), so in fact at the same spark timing the fuel efficiency of SI engine operating on syngas in the ultra-lean range could be even higher than that reflected in Fig. 1b. For engine operating on gasoline under load (Fig. 3-5), as compared with the idle regime, emission of NOx is increased while emissions of CHx and CO are decreased. Apparently, the observed trend in dependence of NOx and CHx content on load is controlled by the combustion temperature determined by the fuel content in charge. In the range of gasoline engine stable performance (1.4), CHx and CO decrease with reaching a plateau while NOx goes through the maximum. In all studied range of , addition of syngas to gasoline decreases NOx content in the exhaust (Fig. 4), while CO and CHx content increases at >1.4 (Figs. 3, 5). The syngas composition affects emission of these components: the higher is H2 content in syngas (Table 1), the lower is their emission. At high , CHx and CO emissions increase due to decrease of the combustion efficiency.
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A broad scattering of data in Figs. 3 and 5 for the case of syngas obtained from the NG is explained by a broad variation at the same of the syngas/gasoline mass ratio (from 0.54 to 1.6)
3000
NOx1 NOx2 NOx3

NOx, ppm

2000

1000

0 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 Oxygen excess, 1.8

Figure 4: NOx content in exhaust versus for VAZ 2111 engine under load for different fuel mixtures (sets 1-3)
500 400
CHx, ppm
1 2 3

a L H

250
b
1 2 3

Q, MJ/h

300 200 100 0 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8

200

150

1.0

Oxygen excess,

1.2 1.4 1.6 Oxygen excess,

1.8

Figure 5: CHx content in exhaust (a) and fuel consumption (b) versus for VAZ 2111 engine under load for different fuel mixtures (sets 1-3). For set 2, groups of CHx points marked by H or L correspond to a higher or lower share of syngas in the fuel mixture (see text). in the fuel mixture in this set of experiments: the higher is the syngas share, the lower is CO and CHx emission. Hence, the increase of hydrogen content in the fuel mixture allows to stabilize combustion and suppress CHx and CO emission. At an optimum , the fuel consumption is lower for the mixtures of gasoline with syngas (Fig. 5b), especially in the ultra-lean region for syngas with a higher H2 content. This can be again affected by increasing the spark timing up to 60o BTDC at the lean limit. In any case, our results agree with those of Haconen et al (1991) who demonstrated a significant reduction in the specific fuel consumption (especially in the partial load regimes) when syngas produced by on board gasoline steam reforming was added to the pilot fuel. 3.2. Gas engine Dependence of harmful components emission on for the case of spark ignition engine operating on the natural gas in the idle mode is presented in Fig. 6a. The observed trends well agree with those reported by Bauer and Forest (2001) for one-cylinder CFR engine test. CHx include fuel components, products of their partial oxidation and lubricating oil. They are thought to form in the quench zone" at the cool cylinder walls and the crevice volumes where the flame is extinguished. Lean combustion slows the burn speed, and at lower cylinder temperatures the
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quench zone is larger. The presence of unburned HCs also increases in the rich region due to the lack of O2 required to complete combustion. As the result, CHx content is lowest at ~ 1.2, where the combustion efficiency is highest, burning speed is fastest, and cylinder temperatures are high.
300
NOx, CHx content, ppm a
NOx CHx CO

1.4
NOx, CHx content, ppm

250 200 150 100

NOx CHx CO

4
Concentration CO, %

250 200 150 100 50 0

1.2 1.0 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2

Concentration CO, %

0 50 0.9 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Oxygen excess, 1.4 1.5

1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 Oxygen excess,

Figure 6: NOx, CO and CHx content in exhaust versus for VAZ 2114 gas engine in the idle regime fed by natural gas (a) or natural gas+ syngas (b). Spark timing 27- 32o BTDC. Nitrogen oxides (NO and NO2) are formed from oxygen and nitrogen at high temperatures in a reaction separate from combustion by so called Zeldovich mechanism. Their maximum is observed at ~ 1.2 where combustion temperatures are high, and there is an excess of oxygen. For richer mixtures NOx content decreases due to a decreasing amount of oxygen. For leaner mixtures, the decrease in NOx content is primarily due to decreasing combustion temperature. CO content in exhaust is determined mainly by the amount of oxygen available for its oxidation, thus decreasing with . As compared with the pure natural gas as a fuel, in the idle mode with addition of syngas position of the NOx maximum content versus remains nearly the same (Fig. 6b), though it decreases by 2-3 times both at the maximum and at the lean limit. Note that at the stoichiometric point, the content of CHx and CO for the mixed fuel was increased, which suggests lower peak combustion temperature. Hence, decline of NOx content in exhaust with syngas addition is determined mainly by the reduced peak combustion temperature (Bauer and Forest, 2001). With increasing (and hydrogen content in the mixture as well, vide supra), CO and CHx content declines to the level below that for pure NG, due to decreasing the overall carbon content in the feed, increasing the oxygen content and stabilizing combustion of lean mixtures. Hence, for gas SI engine, the most efficient idle regime allowing to suppress emission is that with a relative excess of syngas and the oxygen excess at least ~ 1.5. In the full-load experiments with the natural gas as a fuel (Fig. 7a), due to increase of cylinder peak temperature, the maximum NOx content increases, while CO and CHx content respectively decreases. In the ultra -lean region, as expected (Bauer and Forest, 2001), CHx content increases due to slowing the burning rate. With the mixture of syngas and natural gas as a fuel at full load (Fig. 7b), dependence of NOx, CHx and CO emissions on resembles that for the engine fuelled with gasoline + syngas mixture (Figs. 3-5), the content of harmful components being 2-3 times lower for the case of the gas engine. Apparently, syngas addition decreases NOx content due to dilution effect, since addition of pure hydrogen to methane only increases NOx content (Bauer and Forest, 2001). Similarly, as compared with the natural gas + hydrogen (hythane) mixture, syngas addition gives higher residual CO content, which would be expected taking into account rather poor gas-phase combustion of CO. As far as the fuel efficiency is concerned, syngas addition allows at least keep it at the level typical for the operation on pure natural gas.
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3500
NOx, CHx content, ppm

2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 Oxygen excess,

NOx CHx CO

NOx, CHx content, ppm

3000

1200
2

0.4 Concentration CO, % 0.3

NOx CHx CO

1000 800 600 400 200 0 1.2 1.6 2.0 2.4 Oxygen excess, 2.8

Concentration CO, %

0.2 0.1

2.0

2.2

Figure 7: NOx, CO and CHx content in exhaust versus for VAZ 2114 gas engine under load fed by natural gas (a) or natural gas + syngas (b). Spark timing increases with from 27 to 60o BTDC. 3.3. Diesel engine Main results are presented in Fig. 8-9. As follows from these data, addition of syngas to the pilot fuel allows to suppress NOx emission both in ultra-lean and relatively rich mixtures, though some increase of NOx level was observed in the intermediate range. In general, hydrogen addition to the diesel fuel was found to increase the NOx emission (Kumar et al, 2003), which was explained by a higher cylinder peak temperature and pressure. Hence, in our case, decline of NOx content with addition of syngas can be assigned to diluting effect of nitrogen and carbon oxides along with the residual water contained in syngas. Indeed, a similar effect of NOx emission cut-off was earlier obtained when combining the exhaust gas recirculation technique with addition of hydrogen (Tsolakis et al, 2003). While CHx increases only slightly with syngas addition remaining at a low (less than 40 ppm) level, CO emission increases considerably. Since CO emission was found to be decreased for all cases when hydrogen was added to the diesel oil fuel (Kumar et al, 2003), this suggests that observed effect is due to a considerable CO content in syngas. Moreover, due to dilution effect of inert components of syngas, the decrease of the combustion temperature and
1.0 CO concentration, % 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0.0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Oxygen excess, 8 9
a
diesel fuel syngas + diesel fuel

CHx concentration, ppm

40

b
diesel fuel syngas + diesel fuel

30

20

10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Oxygen excess, 8 9

Figure 8: CO (a) and CHx (b) content in the diesel exhaust versus the oxygen excess

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2000 NOx concentration, ppm 1600 1200 800 400 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Oxygen excess, 8 9
diesel fuel syngas + diesel fuel

Figure 9: NOx content in the diesel exhaust versus the oxygen excess corresponding deterioration of combustion efficiency, especially at low equivalence ratios, can be responsible for the increase of CO content in exhaust as well. The engine thermal efficiency when operating on the diesel oil increases with the engine brake power from 10% (torque 17 Nm) to 40% (torque 360 Nm), which is a typical trend for diesel engines (Kumar et al, 2003). For the mixture of syngas and diesel oil, the thermal efficiency varied in the same range of torque from ~ 4% to ~ 31%, which corresponds to 20-30 rel. % decline. Similar effects in decreasing the thermal efficiency of diesel engine at low and moderate loads with addition of hydrogen were demonstrated by Kumar et al (2003). This is explained by a poor combustion efficiency of the dual fuel engine under part load conditions. At light loads in the lean range, when the hydrogen share is high, the diesel oil-hydrogen mixture poorly ignites and combusts. More pronounced decline of thermal efficiency with addition of syngas apparently is caused by decline of the peak cylinder temperature due to dilution effect (vide supra). Though not controlled in the present research, another positive effect of syngas addition is expected to be decrease of smoke and PM emissions as was demonstrated by Kumar et al (2003) for the case of hydrogen addition and by Tsolakis at al (2003) for combining exhaust gas recirculation with addition of hydrogen. 3.4. Specificity of syngas as fuel additives Results of the present research and their comparison with published data for the hydrogen addition to gas or liquid fueld (vide supra) allows to make some preliminary conclusions about the specificity of syngas as fuel additive. The specificity of syngas effect is due to both physical and chemical factors, namely, presence of both diluents (nitrogen, carbon dioxide, water) as well as components of exhausts (methane, CO) in syngas. This leads to both positive effects (such as decrease of NOx emissions to 10-20 ppm level) and negative ones (enhanced emissions of CO and CHx in some operation modes). While such positive effect as pronounced decline of NOx emissions is caused by the physical factors (fuel dilution by neutral components), another positive feature such as economy in the fuel consumption is due to the chemical ability of hydrogen to keep combustion in the ultra-lean range. Since NOx removal in the oxygen excess is much more difficult task as compared with CO and CHx abatement in a simple oxidizing converter, the advantage of using syngas as an additive to the pilot fuel is apparent. Moreover, the negative effects of the presence of CO and CHx in syngas can be overcome by increasing the relative content of hydrogen in syngas. It can be achieved by generating syngas primarily from the natural gas (even for the case of gasoline as pilot fuel) as well as using a part of exhaust enriched with water instead of air for syngas generation in the autothermal mode (Jamal et al, 1996). Due to increased temperature of exhaust gases, this will allow also to improve the overall thermal efficiency of both syngas generators and of all engine operation on the mixture of syngas and pilot fuel.
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4. CONCLUSION Tests with SI gasoline and gas engines demonstrate that addition of syngas generated by partial oxidation of gasoline or natural gas in compact syngas generators stabilizes engines operation in the ultra-lean mode where for pure fuels misfire occurs. In the idle or low-load modes, this allows to cut NOx emissions while keeping CO and CHx emissions at an acceptable level. For gasoline engine, in idle mode, running on pure syngas in ultra-lean mode allows to cut the fuel consumption at least for 20-30%. Since the most promising results under load with syngas addition were obtained for the gasoline-fuelled engine, this direction seems to be of primary importance at present. For gas SI engine environmental benefits were demonstrated as well, while the issue of the fuel economy should be verified further in more detailed experiments. For the diesel engine the benefits of syngas addition are mainly due to NOx emissions cut-off, though at the prize of enhanced fuel consumption and CO emission. For this type of engine, the future prospects of syngas admixing could be associated with using a part of water and oxygenrich exhaust for the diesel fuel autothermal reforming to produce syngas more enriched with hydrogen. This will help to cut emissions of soot and PM as well. In general, despite its incompleteness, the present research demonstrates that for the nearest future, the prospects of compact on-board syngas generators application for replacing a part of the pilot fuel by syngas are very attractive. Acknowledgements. Support by Avtovaz, ISTC 2529 Project and Integration Project 39 of SB RAS is gratefully acknowledged. REFERENCES Akansu, S. O., Dulger, Z., Kahraman, N., Vezirolu, T.N.: Internal combustion engines fueled by natural gas hydrogen mixtures, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, 29, (2004), 1527-1539. Bauer, C.G., and Forest, T.W.: Effect of hydrogen addition on the performance of methane-fueled vehicules. Part I: effect on S.I. engine performance, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy 26, (2001), 50-90. Bobrova, L., Zolotarskii, I., Sadykov, V., Pavlova, S., Snegurenko, O., Tikhov, S., Korotkich, V., Kuznetsova, T., Sobyanin, V., Parmon, V.: Syngas formation by selective catalytic oxidation of liquid hydrocarbons in a short contact time adiabatic reactor, Chemical Engineering Journal 107, (2005), 171179. Bromberg, L., Cohn, D.R., Rabinovich, A., Heywood, J.: Emissions reductions using hydrogen from plasmatron fuel converters, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy 26, (2001), 1115 1121. DAndrea, T., Henshaw, P.F., Ting, D.S.-K.: The addition of hydrogen to a gasoline-fueled SI engine, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy 29, (2004), 1541 1552. Haconen, J., Pinhasi, G., Puterman, Y., and Sher, E.: Driving cycle simulation of a vehicle motored by a SI engine fuelled with H2-enriched gasoline, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy 16, (1991), 695 702. Heffel, J.W.: NOx emission reduction in a hydrogen fueled internal combustion engine at 3000 rpm using exhaust gas recirculation, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy 28, (2003), 1285 1292. Hoekstra, R.L., Collier, K., Mulligan, N., and Chew, L.: Experimental study of a clean burning vehicle fuel, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy 20, (1995), 737-745. Jamal, Y., Wagner, T., and Wyszynski, M.L.: Exhaust gas reforming of gasoline at moderate temperatures, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, 21, (1996), 507-519.
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