Simulating the influence of injection timing, premixed ratio, and inlet temperature on natural gas/diesel dual-fuel HCCI combustion in a diesel engine

Abstract

Dual–fuel HCCI engines allow a relatively small quantity of diesel fuel to be used to ignite a variety of fuels such as natural gas or methane in HCCI mode. The gaseous fuel is mixed with the incoming air, and diesel fuel is sprayed into the cylinder by direct injection. Mathematical modelling is used to investigate the effects of parameters such as premixed ratio (fuel ratio) and pilot fuel injection timing on combustion of a dual–fuel HCCI engines. A CFD package is used with AVL FIRE software to simulate dual–fuel HCCI combustion in detail. The results establish a suitable range of premixed ratio and liquid fuel injection timing for low levels of NOx, CO and HC emissions along with a reliable and efficient combustion. Dual–fuel HCCI mode can increase NOx emission with lower premixed ratios in comparison to normal HCCI engines, but it is shown that the NOx emission reduces above a certain level of the premixed ratio. Due to the requirement of homogenous mixing of liquid fuel with air, the liquid fuel injection is earlier than for diesel engines. It is shown that, with careful control of parameters, dual–fuel HCCI engines have lower emissions in comparison with conventional engines.