Predicting the Physical and Chemical Ignition Delays in a Military Diesel Engine Running n-Hexadecane Fuel

Author(s):  
Len Hamilton ◽  
Dianne Luning Prak ◽  
Jim Cowart

There are currently numerous efforts to create renewable fuels that have similar properties to conventional diesel fuels. One major future challenge is evaluating how these new fuels will function in older legacy diesel engines. It is desired to have physically based modeling tools that will predict new fuel performance without extensive full scale engine testing. This study evaluates two modeling tools that are used together to predict ignition delay in a military diesel engine running n-hexadecane as a fuel across the engine's speed-load range. AVL-FIRE® is used to predict the physical delay of the fuel from the start of injection until the formation of a combustible mixture. Then a detailed Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) chemical kinetic mechanism is used to predict the chemical ignition delay. This total model predicted ignition delay is then compared to the experimental engine data. The combined model predicted results show good agreement to that of the experimental data across the engine operating range with the chemical delay being a larger fraction of the total ignition delay. This study shows that predictive tools have the potential to evaluate new fuel combustion performance.

Author(s):  
Len Hamilton ◽  
Jim Cowart ◽  
Dianne Luning Prak

There are currently numerous efforts to create renewable fuels that have similar properties to conventional diesel fuels. One major future challenge is evaluating how these new fuels will function in older legacy diesel engines. It is desired to have physically based modeling tools that will predict new fuel performance without extensive full scale engine testing. This study evaluates two modeling tools that are used together to predict ignition delay in a military diesel engine running n-hexadecane as a fuel across the engine’s speed-load range. AVL-FIRE® is used to predict the physical delay of the fuel from the start of injection until the formation of a combustible mixture. Then a detailed LLNL chemical kinetic mechanism is used to predict the chemical ignition delay. This total model predicted ignition delay is then compared to the experimental engine data. The combined model predicted results show good agreement to that of the experimental data across the engine operating range with the chemical delay being a larger fraction of the total ignition delay. This study shows that predictive tools have the potential to evaluate new fuel combustion performance.


Author(s):  
Jim S. Cowart ◽  
Warren Fischer ◽  
Len J. Hamilton ◽  
Patrick A. Caton ◽  
S. Mani Sarathy ◽  
...  

In an effort towards predicting the combustion behavior of a new fuel in a conventional diesel engine, Hydrotreated Renewable Jet (HRJ) fuel was first run in a military diesel engine across the entire speed-load operating range. Ignition delay was characterized for this fuel at each operating condition. Next, a HRJ surrogate fuel was developed in order to predict the combustion performance of this new renewable fuel. A chemical ignition delay was then predicted across the speed-load range using a detailed chemical kinetic mechanism model based on an 8-component surrogate representative of HRJ. The modeling suggests that rich fuel-air parcels developed from the diesel spray are the first to ignite. The chemical ignition delay results also show decreasing ignition delays with increasing engine load and speed just as shown by the empirical data. A moderate difference between the total and chemical ignition delays was then characterized as a physical delay period which scales inversely with engine speed. The approach used in this study suggests that the ignition delay and thus start of combustion may be predicted with reasonable accuracy allowing for the analytical assessment of the acceptability of a new fuel in a conventional engine.


2020 ◽  
Vol 142 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shrabanti Roy ◽  
Omid Askari

Abstract Reduction of the detail chemical kinetic mechanism is important in solving complex combustion simulation. In this work, a model reduction scheme rate-controlled constrained-equilibrium (RCCE) is considered in predicting the oxidation of ethanol. A detail kinetic mechanism by Merinov from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is used in modeling this reduction technique. The RCCE method considers constrained equilibrium states which subjected to a lower number of constraints compared to the number of species. It then has to solve a smaller number of differential equations compared to the number of equations required in solving the detailed kinetic model (DKM). The accuracy of this solution depends on the selection of the constraint. A systematic procedure which will help in identifying the constraint at an optimal level of accuracy is an essential for RCCE modeling. A fully automated Approximate Singular Value Decomposition of the Actual Degrees of Disequilibrium (ASVDADD) method is used in this study to derive the constraint for RCCE simulation. ASVDADD uses an algorithm which follows the simple algebraic analysis on results of underlying DKM to find the degree of disequilibrium (DoD) of the individual chemical reactions. The number of constraints which will be used in RCCE simulation can be selected to reduce the number of equations required to solve. In the current work, this ASVDADD method is applied on ethanol oxidation to select the constraint for RCCE simulation. Both DKM and RCCE calculations on ethanol fuel are demonstrated to compare the result of temperature distribution and an ignition delay time for validating the method.


Author(s):  
Leonard J. Hamilton ◽  
Sherry A. Williams ◽  
Richard A. Kamin ◽  
Matthew A. Carr ◽  
Patrick A. Caton ◽  
...  

A new Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO) from the camelina plant has been processed into a Hydrotreated Renewable Jet (HRJ) fuel. This HRJ fuel was tested in an extensively instrumented legacy military diesel engine along with conventional Navy jet fuel JP-5. Both fuels performed well across the speed-load range of this HMMWV engine. The high cetane value of the HRJ leads to modestly shorter ignition delay. The longer ignition delay of JP-5 delivers shorter overall combustion durations, with associated higher indicated engine torque levels. Both brake torque and brake fuel consumption are better with conventional JP-5 by up to ten percent, due to more ideal combustion characteristics.


Author(s):  
Seung Eon Jang ◽  
Jin Park ◽  
Sang Hyeon Han ◽  
Hong Jip Kim ◽  
Ki Sung Jung ◽  
...  

Abstract In this study, the auto ignition with low limit temperature of syngas has been numerically investigated using a 2-D numerical analysis. Previous study showed that auto ignition was observed at above 860 K in co-flow jet experiments using syngas and dry air. However, the auto ignition at this low temperature range could not be predicted with existing chemical mechanisms. Inconsistency of the auto ignition temperature between the experimental and numerical results is thought to be due to the inaccuracy of the chemical kinetic mechanism. The prediction of ignition delay time and sensitivity analysis for each chemical kinetic mechanism were performed to verify the reasons of the inconsistency between the experimental and numerical results. The results which were calculated using the various mechanisms showed significantly differences in the ignition delay time. In this study, we intend to analyze the reason of discrepancy to predict the auto ignition with low pressure and low temperature region of syngas and to improve the chemical kinetic mechanism. A sensitive analysis has been done to investigate the reaction steps which affected the ignition delay time significantly, and the reaction rate of the selected reaction step was modified. Through the modified chemical kinetic mechanism, we could identify the auto ignition in the low temperature region from the 2-D numerical results. Then CEMA (Chemical Explosive Mode Analysis) was used to validate the 2-D numerical analysis with modified chemical kinetic mechanism. From the validation, the calculated λexp, EI, and PI showed reasonable results, so we expect that the modified chemical kinetic mechanism can be used in various low temperature region.


Author(s):  
Shaoping Shi ◽  
Daniel Lee ◽  
Sandra McSurdy ◽  
Michael McMillian ◽  
Steven Richardson ◽  
...  

In any theoretical investigation of ignition processes in natural gas reciprocating engines, physical and chemical mechanisms must be adequately modeled and validated in an independent manner. The Rapid Compression Machine (RCM) has been used in the past as a tool to validate both autoignition models as well as turbulent mixing effects. In this study, two experimental cases were examined. In the first experimental case, the experimental measurements of Lee and Hochgreb (1998a) were chosen to validate the simulation results. In their experiments, hydrogen/oxygen/argon mixtures were used as reactants. In the simulations, a reduced chemical kinetic mechanism consisting of 10 species and 19 elementary reactions coupled to a CFD software, Fluent 6, was used to simulate the autoignition. The ignition delay from the simulation agreed very well with that from the experimental data of Lee and Hochgreb, (1998b). In the second case, experimental data derived from an RCM with two opposed, pneumatically driven pistons (Brett et al., 2001) were used to study the autoignition of methane/oxygen/argon mixtures. The reduced chemical kinetic mechanism DRM22, derived from the GRI-Mech reaction scheme coupled to Fluent 6, was applied in the simulations. The DRM22 scheme included 22 species and 104 reactions. When methane/oxygen/argon mixture were simulated for the RCM, the ignition delay deviated about 15% from the experimental results. The simulation approaches as well as the validation results are discussed in detail in this paper. The paper also discusses an evaluation of reduced reaction models available in the literature for subsequent Fluent modeling.


Author(s):  
Michael V. Johnson ◽  
S. Scott Goldsborough ◽  
Timothy A. Smith ◽  
Steven S. McConnell

Continued interest in kinetically-modulated combustion regimes, such as HCCI and PCCI, poses a significant challenge in controlling the ignition timing due to the lack of direct control of combustion phasing hardware available in traditional SI and CI engines. Chemical kinetic mechanisms, validated based on fundamental data from experiments like rapid compression machines and shock tubes, offer reasonably accurate predictions of ignition timing; however utilizing these requires high computational cost making them impractical for use in engine control schemes. Empirically-derived correlations offer faster control, but are generally not valid beyond the narrow range of conditions over which they were derived. This study discusses initial work in the development of an ignition correlation based on a detailed chemical kinetic mechanism for three component gasoline surrogate, composed of n-heptane, iso-octane and toluene, or toluene reference fuel (TRF). Simulations are conducted over a wide range of conditions including temperature, pressure, equivalence ratio and dilution for a range of tri-component blends in order to produce ignition delay time and investigate trends in ignition as pressure, equivalence ratio, temperature and fuel reactivity are varied. A modified, Arrhenius-based power law formulation will be used in a future study to fit the computed ignition delay times.


2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Chit Wityi Oo ◽  
Masahiro Shioji ◽  
Hiroshi Kawanabe ◽  
Susan A. Roces ◽  
Nathaniel P. Dugos

The biodiesel surrogate fuels are realistic kinetic tools to study the combustion of actual biodiesel fuels in diesel engines. The knowledge of fuel chemistry aids in the development of combustion modeling. In order to numerically simulate the diesel combustion, it is necessary to construct a compact reaction model for describing the chemical reaction. This study developed a skeletal kinetic model of methyl decanoate (MD) and n-heptane as a biodiesel surrogate blend for the chemical combustion reactions. The skeletal kinetic model is simply composed of 45 chemical species and 74 reactions based on the full kinetic models which have been developed by Lawrance Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and Knowledge-basing Utilities for Complex Reaction Systems (KUCRS) under the diesel like engine conditions. The model in this study is generated by using CHEMKIN and then it is used to produce the ignition delay data and the related chemical species. The model predicted good reasonable agreement for the ignition delays and most of the reaction products at various conditions. The chemical species are well reproduced by this skeletal kinetic model while the good temperature dependency is found under constant pressure conditions 2MPa and 4MPa. The ignition delay time of present model is slightly shorter than the full kinetic model near negative temperature coefficient (NTC) regime. This skeletal model can provide the chemical kinetics to apply in the simulation codes for diesel-engine combustion.


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