Abstract
Decentralized power generation by combined heat and power plants becomes increasingly popular as a measure to advance the energy transition. In this context, a substantial advantage of small combined heat and power plants is based on the relatively low pollutant emissions. However, a large proportion of the pollutant emissions is produced during a cold-start. This fact is not reflected in governmental and institutional emission guidelines, as these strongly focus on the emission levels under steady-state conditions. This study analyzes the spark advance, the reference air/fuel ratio and an electrically heated catalyst in terms of their potential to reduce the cold-start emissions of a micro combined heat and power plant which uses a natural gas fueled reciprocating internal combustion engine as prime mover and a three-way catalytic converter as aftertreatment system. Based on these measures, control approaches were developed that account for the specific operating conditions of the class of small combined heat and power plants, e.g., full-load operation and flexible, demand-driven runtimes. The experimental data demonstrates that even solutions with marginal adaptation/integration effort can reduce cold-start emissions to a great extent.
Highlights
In recent years, the energy sector has been experiencing an increasing diffusion of renewable energy sources, e.g., solar or wind, that contribute to the electricity grid [1]
In order to compare the effectiveness of the different strategies for reducing the cold-start pollutant emissions, the results are discussed with respect to the following measures: 1
The strategies investigated are compared to the reference case, i.e., the case with Maximum Brake Torque (MBT) timing at a spark advance ζ = 30 °CA(bTDC), an air/fuel ratio (AFR) setpoint of λUS_SP = λUS_SS = 1.008, and a disabled electrically-heated catalyst (EHC)
Summary
The energy sector has been experiencing an increasing diffusion of renewable energy sources, e.g., solar or wind, that contribute to the electricity grid [1]. These sources are strongly dependent on environmental factors, such as local weather phenomena. For CHPs of the mini and micro power class (
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