Numerical analysis of performance and emissions behavior of a bi-fuel engine with compressed natural gas enriched with hydrogen using variable compression ratio strategy

Abstract

The increase in the compression ratio reduces the fuel consumption and improves the performance. These effects of compression ratio could be observed in all of the engines, such as compression or spark ignition engines. Moreover, due to the compression ratio constraint based on the knocking phenomenon in spark ignition engines, there will always be an optimal compression ratio, which is one of the most fundamental factors in engine design. The optimum compression ratio could be achieved depending on the type of fuel, but in the case of bi-fuel engines, since the nature of each fuel is different, the design must be relatively optimal for both fuels. In this work, by using the VCR (variable compression ratio) strategy, the bi-fuel EF7 engine performance, combustion, and emissions were investigated in different compression ratios when the engine uses gasoline or HCNG (hydrogen enriched compressed natural gas) as fuel. The results revealed that by changing the compression ratio from 11.05 (actual compression ratio of engine) to 11.80 in HCNG mode, an increase of 13% in power could be achieved. Also CO formation, at the compression ratio of 11.80, was slightly lower (7%) than the compression ratio of 11.05. In addition, by reducing the compression ratio from 11.05 to 10.50 in gasoline mode, there was a significant increase in emissions; that was 44% for the NOx and 16% for the CO, which could be one of the limiting factors of the advance in spark timing. Moreover, due to the VCR strategy and the significant optimization of the compression ratio, the combinatory method of VCR – HCNG can be used as an effective method for the bi-fuel engines in order to improve the performance and reduce emissions.