Mechanism of hydrocarbon reduction using multiple injection in a natural gas fuelled/micro-pilot diesel ignition engine

Abstract

Research has shown that a large amount of natural gas (NG) is unburned at light loads in an NG fuelled/micro-pilot diesel compression ignition engine. A mechanism of unburned hydrocarbon (HC) reduction using multiple injections of micro-pilot diesel has been proposed in this paper. Multidimensional computations were carried out for a dual-fuel engine based on a modified CAT3401 engine configuration. The computations show that a split injection with a small percentage (e.g. 30 per cent of diesel in the second injection pulse) can significantly reduce HC, CO and NOx emissions. Based on parametric studies to optimize the timing of both of the injection pulses, HC emissions could be reduced by 90 per cent, with a reduction in CO emissions of 50 per cent and NOx emissions of 70 per cent in comparison to a single-injection pulse-base case configuration.