Waste-to-energy technologies as the future of internal combustion engines

Abstract

Syngas has a promising future as alternative to petroleum products and as a fuel for combustion engines. This study provides an overview on the feasibility of using syngas to power internal combustion engines. It presents technological process solutions for producing syngas toward minimizing the formation of tars as the most undesirable component for engine applications.. The combustion process characteristic of syngas composition has been tackled including critical criteria such as the flammability limit, ignition delay, laminar velocity, turbulent velocity, and the subsequent challenges in determining a numerical methods that best matches the exprimental datas. The syngas usage as alternative resource, while tackling the uncertainty issue of its composition, for Compression Ignition (CI) and Spark Ignition (SI) with the emission and performance effectiveness has been studied as well. The results of the review showed that syngas can be a viable alternative for some stationary applications, such as advanced integrated systems (ICCG), but its application is, however, relatively limited, for example as a secondary fuel in engines (CI) for automotive applications. However, significant discrepancies between numerical (simulation) and experimental results have been noted. This suggests that there are many scientific and experimental challenges in the area of syngas combustion processes in internal combustion engines. However, given the potential of this group of fuels, especially in the face of the energy crisis, this research is highly desirable and has a significant application perspective.