Conversion and Performance Analysis of a Small Utility Vehicle Operating on Hydrogen Fuel

Author(s):  
Ronald Fifield ◽  
Julian Gardner ◽  
Robert Boehm

Hydrogen as a combustible fuel offers great promise as a renewable alternative to fossil fuels. Test platforms are an important step toward the commercialization of any renewable fuel, as they can highlight more efficient means of implementing new and enhancing existing technologies. One such platform involves the conversion of gasoline fueled engines to operate on gaseous hydrogen. Traditional means for converting an engine to operate on hydrogen consists of port injection with slight modification to the spark timing. Due to stringent emissions standards, control over the production of NOx typically received precedence over volumetric efficiency and ultimately power output. This has been typically accomplished using very lean burn regimens. Through the advancement of computer control for injection systems, significant improvements have been made in the fuel delivery system resulting in better fuel mileage, emissions, and power output while using near-stoichiometric conditions. Highlighted in this paper is the conversion of a single cylinder, 2-seater utility vehicle with special emphasis on the direct injection system and performance results. The latter include operations on three fuels: gasoline, natural gas, and hydrogen. Generally the hydrogen-related components were able to be installed in the areas within the vehicle used for the original gasoline system. Experiences in designing a direct-injection system as well as the application of a computer-control system are described. Also contained are emissions comparisons to similar conversions as well as that of the pre-modified engine operating on gasoline.

2014 ◽  
Vol 532 ◽  
pp. 362-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiang Feng Mou ◽  
Rui Qing Chen ◽  
Yi Wei Lu

This paper studies the lean burn limit characteristic of the compound injection system of the direct-injection gasoline engine. The low pressure nozzle on the intake manifold can achieve quality homogeneous lean mixture, and the direct injection in the cylinder can realized the dense mixture gas near the spark plug. By adjusting the two injection timing and injection quantity, and a strong intake tumble flow with special shaped combustion chamber, it can produces the reverse tumble to form different hierarchical levels of mixed gas in the cylinder. Experimental results show: the compound combustion system to the original direct-injection engine lean burn limit raise 1.8-2.5 AFR unit.


1999 ◽  
Vol 123 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. J. Tennison ◽  
R. Reitz

An investigation of the effect of injection parameters on emissions and performance in an automotive diesel engine was conducted. A high-pressure common-rail injection system was used with a dual-guided valve covered orifice nozzle tip. The engine was a four-valve single cylinder high-speed direct-injection diesel engine with a displacement of approximately 12 liter and simulated turbocharging. The engine experiments were conducted at full load and 1004 and 1757 rev/min, and the effects of injection pressure, multiple injections (single vs pilot with main), and pilot injection timing on emissions and performance were studied. Increasing the injection pressure from 600 to 800 bar reduced the smoke emissions by over 50 percent at retarded injection timings with no penalty in oxides of nitrogen NOx or brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC). Pilot injection cases exhibited slightly higher smoke levels than single injection cases but had similar NOx levels, while the single injection cases exhibited slightly better BSFC. The start-of-injection (SOI) of the pilot was varied while holding the main SOI constant and the effect on emissions was found to be small compared to changes resulting from varying the main injection timing. Interestingly, the point of autoignition of the pilot was found to occur at a nearly constant crank angle regardless of pilot injection timing (for early injection timings) indicating that the ignition delay of the pilot is a chemical delay and not a physical (mixing) one. As the pilot timing was advanced the mixture became overmixed, and an increase of over 50 percent in the unburned hydrocarbon emissions was observed at the most advanced pilot injection timing.


2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (1 Part B) ◽  
pp. 475-488
Author(s):  
Amirreza Ghahremani ◽  
Mohammad Ahari ◽  
Mojtaba Jafari ◽  
Mohammad Saidi ◽  
Ahmad Hajinezhad ◽  
...  

One of the key solutions to improve engine performance and reduce exhaust emissions of internal combustion engines is direct injection of bio-fuels. A new modified bio-ethanol is produced to be substituted by fossil fuels in gasoline direct injection engines. The key advantages of modified bio-ethanol fuel as an alternative fuel are higher octane number and oxygen content, a long-chain hydro-carbon fuel, and lower emissions compared to fossil fuels. In the present study spray properties of a modified bio-ethanol and its atomization behaviors have been studied experimentally and theoretically. Based on atomization physics of droplets dimensional analysis has been performed to develop a new non-dimensional number namely atomization index. This number determines the atomization level of the spray. Applying quasi-steady jet theory, air entrainment and fuel-air mixing studies have been performed. The spray atomization behaviors such as atomization index number, Ohnesorge number, and Sauter mean diameter have been investigated employing atomization model. The influences of injection and ambient conditions on spray properties of different blends of modified bio-ethanol and gasoline fuels have been investigated performing high-speed visualization technique. Results indicate that decreasing the difference of injection and ambient pressures increases spray cone angle and projected area, and decreases spray tip penetration length. As expected, increasing injection pressure improves atomization behaviors of the spray. Increasing percentage of modified bio-ethanol in the blend, increases spray tip penetration and decreases the projected area as well.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
ShuoYan Chou ◽  
Truong ThiThuy Duong ◽  
Nguyen Xuan Thao

Energy plays a central part in economic development, yet alongside fossil fuels bring vast environmental impact. In recent years, renewable energy has gradually become a viable source for clean energy to alleviate and decouple with a negative connotation. Different types of renewable energy are not without trade-offs beyond costs and performance. Multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) has become one of the most prominent tools in making decisions with multiple conflicting criteria existing in many complex real-world problems. Information obtained for decision making may be ambiguous or uncertain. Neutrosophic is an extension of fuzzy set types with three membership functions: truth membership function, falsity membership function and indeterminacy membership function. It is a useful tool when dealing with uncertainty issues. Entropy measures the uncertainty of information under neutrosophic circumstances which can be used to identify the weights of criteria in MCDM model. Meanwhile, the dissimilarity measure is useful in dealing with the ranking of alternatives in term of distance. This article proposes to build a new entropy and dissimilarity measure as well as to construct a novel MCDM model based on them to improve the inclusiveness of the perspectives for decision making. In this paper, we also give out a case study of using this model through the process of a renewable energy selection scenario in Taiwan performed and assessed.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (9) ◽  
pp. 2729
Author(s):  
Ireneusz Pielecha ◽  
Sławomir Wierzbicki ◽  
Maciej Sidorowicz ◽  
Dariusz Pietras

The development of internal combustion engines involves various new solutions, one of which is the use of dual-fuel systems. The diversity of technological solutions being developed determines the efficiency of such systems, as well as the possibility of reducing the emission of carbon dioxide and exhaust components into the atmosphere. An innovative double direct injection system was used as a method for forming a mixture in the combustion chamber. The tests were carried out with the use of gasoline, ethanol, n-heptane, and n-butanol during combustion in a model test engine—the rapid compression machine (RCM). The analyzed combustion process indicators included the cylinder pressure, pressure increase rate, heat release rate, and heat release value. Optical tests of the combustion process made it possible to analyze the flame development in the observed area of the combustion chamber. The conducted research and analyses resulted in the observation that it is possible to control the excess air ratio in the direct vicinity of the spark plug just before ignition. Such possibilities occur as a result of the properties of the injected fuels, which include different amounts of air required for their stoichiometric combustion. The studies of the combustion process have shown that the combustible mixtures consisting of gasoline with another fuel are characterized by greater combustion efficiency than the mixtures composed of only a single fuel type, and that the influence of the type of fuel used is significant for the combustion process and its indicator values.


Author(s):  
Zhentao Liu ◽  
Jinlong Liu

Market globalization necessitates the development of heavy duty diesel engines that can operate at altitudes up to 5000 m without significant performance deterioration. But the current scenario is that existing studies on high altitude effects are still not sufficient or detailed enough to take effective measures. This study applied a single cylinder direct injection diesel engine with simulated boosting pressure to investigate the performance degradation at high altitude, with the aim of adding more knowledge to the literature. Such a research engine was conducted at constant speed and injection strategy but different ambient conditions from sea level to 5000 m in altitude. The results indicated the effects of altitude on engine combustion and performance can be summarized as two aspects. First comes the extended ignition delay at high altitude, which would raise the rate of pressure rise to a point that can exceed the maximum allowable limit and therefore shorten the engine lifespan. The other disadvantage of high-altitude operation is the reduced excess air ratio and gas density inside cylinder. Worsened spray formation and mixture preparation, together with insufficient and late oxidation, would result in reduced engine efficiency, increased emissions, and power loss. The combustion and performance deteriorations were noticeable when the engine was operated above 4000 m in altitude. All these findings support the need for further fundamental investigations of in-cylinder activities of diesel engines working at plateau regions.


2021 ◽  
pp. 146808742110012
Author(s):  
Nicola Giramondi ◽  
Anders Jäger ◽  
Daniel Norling ◽  
Anders Christiansen Erlandsson

Thanks to its properties and production pathways, ethanol represents a valuable alternative to fossil fuels, with potential benefits in terms of CO2, NOx, and soot emission reduction. The resistance to autoignition of ethanol necessitates an ignition trigger in compression-ignition engines for heavy-duty applications, which in the current study is a diesel pilot injection. The simultaneous direct injection of pure ethanol as main fuel and diesel as pilot fuel through separate injectors is experimentally investigated in a heavy-duty single cylinder engine at a low and a high load point. The influence of the nozzle hole number and size of the diesel pilot injector on ethanol combustion and engine performance is evaluated based on an injection timing sweep using three diesel injector configurations. The tested configurations have the same geometric total nozzle area for one, two and four diesel sprays. The relative amount of ethanol injected is swept between 78 – 89% and 91 – 98% on an energy basis at low and high load, respectively. The results show that mixing-controlled combustion of ethanol is achieved with all tested diesel injector configurations and that the maximum combustion efficiency and variability levels are in line with conventional diesel combustion. The one-spray diesel injector is the most robust trigger for ethanol ignition, as it allows to limit combustion variability and to achieve higher combustion efficiencies compared to the other diesel injector configurations. However, the two- and four-spray diesel injectors lead to higher indicated efficiency levels. The observed difference in the ethanol ignition dynamics is evaluated and compared to conventional diesel combustion. The study broadens the knowledge on ethanol mixing-controlled combustion in heavy-duty engines at various operating conditions, providing the insight necessary for the optimization of the ethanol-diesel dual-injection system.


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