In this experimental work Homogenous Charge Compression Ignition of methanol along with direct injection of diesel (HCCI-DI) was achieved by adapting novel injection strategies for controlling the charge homogeneity and ensuring proper combustion in a single cylinder common rail water cooled research engine run at a constant speed of 1500 rpm. Methanol was port injected while the diesel was injected as two pulses – an early first pulse (during start of suction) for enhancing the charge homogeneity and a late second pulse for controlling ignition. The effects of methanol energy share (MES), start of injection of the first and second pulses (SOI-F and SOI-S) and first pulse injected quantity (FIQ) at different loads were studied. The SOI-S of diesel had to be advanced with load for best thermal efficiency. At full load, it had to be retarded to limit knocking. Heat release analysis indicated that higher FIQs resulted in slow combustion as the charge was more homogeneous while lower FIQs formed a stratified mixture that enhanced the thermal efficiency, reduced THC and unregulated emissions while elevating the NOx levels. The thermal efficiencies were higher by about 2.9 and 1.9% compared to the Conventional Dual Fuel (CDF) operation at 75% and 50% loads. The MES that could be tolerated was higher than the CDF mode. Soot was significantly reduced as compared to the CDF mode by 94%, 87.6%, 80.3% while the NOx was reduced by 77.5%, 65.2% and 29.9% at the IMEPs of 5.1, 6.2 and 7.5 bar respectively. However, emissions of unburnt hydrocarbons, carbon mono-oxide, methanol and formaldehydes were higher than the CDF mode. On the whole the methanol diesel HCCI-DI mode has the potential for operation with higher efficiency, lower NOx and soot emissions than the CDF mode.
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