Combustion of natural gas with entrained diesel in a heavy-duty compression-ignition engine

• Main Author: Laforet, Christopher A.
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2009
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/17010

High-pressure direct-injection of natural gas for use in compression-ignition engines has been found to reduce emissions without sacrificing performance relative to pure diesel operation. In the present work, prototype ‘co-injectors’ which inject a diesel and natural gas mixture from a single injector were tested in a heavy-duty, 6-cylinder Cummins ISX engine with 5 cylinders disabled. One prototype (‘B’) was tested under low-speed, low-load conditions, to determine the effects of fuel flows and in-cylinder conditions on the combustion characteristics of co-injection. Co-injector B, and a second prototype (Co-injector CS: A variation of Co-injector B which mixes the fuels differently) were tested at three engine modes using two injections per cycle to determine the effect of the duration of the first injection on emissions and combustion characteristics. The performance of the co-injectors was compared to Westport Innovation’s High Pressure Direct Injection (HPDI) J36 injector to determine if co-injection can produce comparable emissions. Single injection tests carried out with Co-injector B at 800 RPM over a range of diesel flows, gas flows, injection pressures, and cylinder temperatures & pressures were used to generate response surfaces for knock intensity, ignition delay, and combustion efficiency. It was found that diesel flow and the cylinder pressure at the time of injection had the largest effect of knock intensity and ignition delay, and that the knock/ignition delay relationship in co-injection is inverse. The double injection tests showed that the difference in diesel distributions within the gas plenums of CS and B results in more diesel being injected during the first injection in CS compared to B, which supports previous results. It was found that short first pulses resulted in the lowest emissions for both co-injectors, and that with low first gas pulse widths the performance of the co-injectors is comparable to that of Westport’s HPDI-J36 injector. === Applied Science, Faculty of === Mechanical Engineering, Department of === Graduate