In-flame soot quantification of diesel sprays under sooting/non-sooting critical conditions in an optical engine

Abstract

Because of the challenge of meeting stringent emissions regulations for internal combustion engines, some advanced low temperature combustion modes have been raised in recent decades to improve combustion efficiency. Therefore, detailed understanding and capability for accurate prediction of in-flame soot processes under such low sooting conditions are becoming necessary. Nowadays, a lot of investigations have been carried out to quantify in-flame soot in Diesel sprays under high sooting conditions by means of different optical techniques. However, no information of soot quantification can be found for sooting/non-sooting critical conditions. In current study, the instantaneous soot production in a two-stroke optical engine under low sooting conditions has been measured by means of a Diffused back-illumination extinction technique (DBI) and two-color method (2C) simultaneously. The fuels used were n-dodecane and n-heptane, which have been injected separately though two different injectors equipped with single-hole nozzles. A large cycle-to-cycle variation on soot production can be observed under such operating conditions, however the in-cylinder heat release traces were quite repeatable. It is the same with the well-known trends of soot amount to operating conditions that the probability of sooting cycles increases with higher ambient temperature, higher ambient density and lower injection pressure. Both techniques present a pretty good agreement on soot amount when the peak of KL value is close to 1. However, the KL value of two-color method becomes bigger than that of DBI and the difference increases with lower sooting conditions.