Propensity of Soot Deposition in a Rectangular Exhaust Gas Recirculation Cooler Using Kalman Filter

Author(s):  
Alireza Mirsadraee ◽  
M. Reza Malayeri

The detection of fouling in exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) coolers of diesel engines should be fast and accurate. This would facilitate deciding an effective strategy to combat fouling and to prolong the lifetime of EGR coolers. In the present study, the propensity of soot deposition in a rectangular EGR cooler is modeled using Kalman filters. Noises, coherent feature of many deposition processes which can be resulted from measurement sensors such as thermocouples or incidental deposit flake-off, are also considered in the model. The Kalman filter minimizes the estimation error covariance by considering the measurement and process noise covariance matrices while it can simultaneously handle the noisy data. The results are characterized with measurement process noise covariance. The relation between these two defines the smoothness and shape of the estimated trend of fouling resistance. Comparisons of the experimental data and the resultant model confirmed the usefulness of the applied method for various operating conditions of an EGR cooler prone to particulate deposition of soot particles. The paper proceeds with the impact of such models in monitoring fouling and taking an appropriate mitigation approach in diesel engines.

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 1012-1025 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yifan Men ◽  
Ibrahim Haskara ◽  
Guoming Zhu

As the requirements for performance and restrictions on emissions become stringent, diesel engines are equipped with advanced air, fuel, exhaust gas recirculation techniques, and associated control strategies, making them incredibly complex systems. To enable model-based engine control, control-oriented combustion models, including Wiebe-based and single-zone reaction-based models, have been developed to predict engine burn rate or in-cylinder pressure. Despite model simplicity, they are not suitable for engines operating outside the normal range because of the large error beyond calibrated region with extremely high calibration effort. The purpose of this article is to obtain a parametric understanding of diesel combustion by developing a physics-based model which can predict the combustion metrics, such as in-cylinder pressure, burn rate, and indicated mean effective pressure accurately, over a wide range of operating conditions, especially with multiple injections. In the proposed model, it is assumed that engine cylinder is divided into three zones: a fuel zone, a reaction zone, and an unmixed zone. The formulation of reaction and unmixed zones is based on the reaction-based modeling methodology, where the interaction between them is governed by Fick’s law of diffusion. The fuel zone is formulated as a virtual zone, which only accounts for mass and heat transfer associated with fuel injection and evaporation. The model is validated using test data under different speed and load conditions, with multiple injections and exhaust gas recirculation rates. It is shown that the multi-zone model outperformed the single-zone model in in-cylinder pressure prediction and calibration effort with a mild penalty in computational time.


Author(s):  
Y-H Seo ◽  
S-C Heo ◽  
T-W Ku ◽  
J Kim ◽  
B-S Kang

In this study, an exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) cooler with dimpled rectangular tubes, whose heat exchange effectiveness is higher than that of a conventional cooler, is developed. To maximize the heat transfer between the exhaust gas and coolant, the dimples are formed on the surface of the heat exchange tubes. A dimpled-tube manufacturing process is established that comprises: dimple shape forming, edge bending, centre v-notch bending, compression, and plasma welding. The high effectiveness of the dimple-type EGR cooler is confirmed by the effectiveness-NTU method and experimental approaches under normal operating conditions. It is also important to verify the structural integrity, in view of the practical uses of the dimple-type EGR cooler. In order to confirm the safety of the EGR cooler, finite element analyses are carried out for each component, such as the oval core tube with a dimpled shape. The structural integrity under thermal stress and pressure, which are caused by gas and coolant flows in the shell and tubes, is evaluated through thermal and structural analyses.


Author(s):  
Seungwoo Hong ◽  
Inseok Park ◽  
Jaewook Shin ◽  
Myoungho Sunwoo

This paper presents a simplified decoupler-based multivariable controller with a gain scheduling strategy in order to deal with strong nonlinearities and cross-coupled characteristics for exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) and variable geometry turbocharger (VGT) systems in diesel engines. A feedback controller is designed with the gain scheduling strategy, which updates control gains according to engine operating conditions. The gain scheduling strategy is implemented by using a proposed scheduling variable derived from indirect measurements of the EGR mass flow, such as the pressure ratio of the intake, exhaust manifolds, and the exhaust air-to-fuel ratio. The scheduling variable is utilized to estimate static gains of the EGR and VGT systems; it has a large dispersion in various engine operating conditions. Based on the estimated static gains of the plant, the Skogestad internal model control (SIMC) method determines appropriate control gains. The dynamic decoupler is designed to deal with the cross-coupled effects of the EGR and VGT systems by applying a simplified decoupler design method. The simplified decoupler is beneficial for compensating for the dynamics difference between two control loops of the EGR and VGT systems, for example, slow VGT dynamics and fast EGR dynamics. The proposed control algorithm is evaluated through engine experiments. Step test results of set points reveal that root-mean-square (RMS) error of the gain-scheduled feedback controller is reduced by 47% as compared to those of the fixed gain controller. Furthermore, the designed simplified decoupler decreased the tracking error under transients by 14–66% in various engine operating conditions.


Author(s):  
Bhaskar Prabhakar ◽  
André L. Boehman

The effect of engine operating conditions on exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) cooler fouling was studied using a 6.4 L V-8 common rail turbodiesel engine. An experimental setup, which included a custom-made shell and tube heat exchanger (EGR cooler) with six surrogate tubes, was designed to control flow variables independently. The engine was operated at 2150 rpm, 203 Nm and 1400 rpm, 81 Nm, representing medium and low load conditions, respectively, and the coolant to the heat exchanger was circulated at 85 °C and 40 °C. Heat exchanger effectiveness and pressure drop was monitored throughout the tests. Deposits from the EGR cooler were collected every 1.5 h for a total of 9 h, and their microstructure was analyzed using a scanning electron microscope while their chemical composition was analyzed using a pyrolysis GC-MS apparatus, and the elemental weight percentages were obtained using a CHN analyzer. The results of these analyses showed that the effectiveness of the EGR cooler drops rapidly initially and asymptotes in a few hours. The medium load condition had a higher effectiveness loss due to a greater accumulation of deposits inside the EGR cooler, mostly due to increased thermophoresis, and produced smaller and coarse particles. The low load condition had lower effectiveness loss but produced bigger particles mostly due to excess hydrocarbons. Coolant temperature played a significant role in altering the deposit microstructure and in increasing the amount of condensed hydrocarbons. More deposits were produced for the cold coolant condition, indicating that lower coolant temperature promotes greater hydrocarbon condensation and thermophoresis. These results indicate the complex nature of fouling in automotive heat exchangers.


MTZ worldwide ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 68 (12) ◽  
pp. 21-23
Author(s):  
Thomas Holzbaur ◽  
Eike Willers ◽  
Achim Hess ◽  
Hans-Peter Klein ◽  
Markus Schuessler ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (10) ◽  
pp. 1819-1834
Author(s):  
Bryan P Maldonado ◽  
Nan Li ◽  
Ilya Kolmanovsky ◽  
Anna G Stefanopoulou

Cycle-to-cycle feedback control is employed to achieve optimal combustion phasing while maintaining high levels of exhaust gas recirculation by adjusting the spark advance and the exhaust gas recirculation valve position. The control development is based on a control-oriented model that captures the effects of throttle position, exhaust gas recirculation valve position, and spark timing on the combustion phasing. Under the assumption that in-cylinder pressure information is available, an adaptive extended Kalman filter approach is used to estimate the exhaust gas recirculation rate into the intake manifold based on combustion phasing measurements. The estimation algorithm is adaptive since the cycle-to-cycle combustion variability (output covariance) is not known a priori and changes with operating conditions. A linear quadratic regulator controller is designed to maintain optimal combustion phasing while maximizing exhaust gas recirculation levels during load transients coming from throttle tip-in and tip-out commands from the driver. During throttle tip-outs, however, a combination of a high exhaust gas recirculation rate and an overly advanced spark, product of the dynamic response of the system, generates a sequence of misfire events. In this work, an explicit reference governor is used as an add-on scheme to the closed-loop system in order to avoid the violation of the misfire limit. The reference governor is enhanced with model-free learning which enables it to avoid misfires after a learning phase. Experimental results are reported which illustrate the potential of the proposed control strategy for achieving an optimal combustion process during highly diluted conditions for improving fuel efficiency.


Author(s):  
Stefano d'Ambrosio ◽  
Alessandro Ferrari ◽  
Ezio Spessa

Exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) is extensively employed in diesel combustion engines to achieve nitrogen oxides emission targets. The EGR is often cooled in order to increase the effectiveness of the strategy, even though this leads to a further undesired impact on particulate matter and hydrocarbons. Experimental tests were carried out on a diesel engine at a dynamometer rig under steady-state speed and load working conditions that were considered relevant for the New European Driving Cycle. Two different shell and tube-type EGR coolers were compared, in terms of the pressure and temperature of the exhaust and intake lines, to evaluate thermal effectiveness and induced pumping losses. All the relevant engine parameters were acquired along EGR trade-off curves, in order to perform a detailed comparison of the two coolers. The effect of intake throttling operation on increasing the EGR ratio was also investigated. A purposely designed aging procedure was run in order to characterize the deterioration of the thermal effectiveness and verify whether clogging of the EGR cooler occurred. The EGR mass flow-rate dependence on the pressure and temperature upstream of the turbine as well as the pressure downstream of the EGR control valve was modeled by means of the expression for convergent nozzles. The restricted flow-area at the valve-seat passage and the discharge coefficient were accurately determined as functions of the valve lift.


Author(s):  
Fengjun Yan ◽  
Junmin Wang

Fueling control in Diesel engines is not only of significance to the combustion process in one particular cycle, but also influences the subsequent dynamics of air-path loop and combustion events, particularly when exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) is employed. To better reveal such inherently interactive relations, this paper presents a physics-based, control-oriented model describing the dynamics of the intake conditions with fuel injection profile being its input for Diesel engines equipped with EGR and turbocharging systems. The effectiveness of this model is validated by comparing the predictive results with those produced by a high-fidelity 1-D computational GT-Power engine model.


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