Derek Splitter

Fuel reactivity controlled compression ignition (RCCI): a pathway to controlled high-efficiency clean combustion

A fuel reactivity controlled compression ignition (RCCI) concept is demonstrated as a promising method to achieve high efficiency – clean combustion. Engine experiments were performed in a heavy-duty test engine over a range of loads. Additionally, RCCI engine experiments were compared to conventional diesel engine experiments. Detailed computational fluid dynamics modelling was then used to explain the experimentally observed trends. Specifically, it was found that RCCI combustion is capable of operating over a wide range of engine loads with near zero levels of NO x and soot, acceptable pressure rise rate and ringing intensity, and very high indicated efficiency. For example, a peak gross indicated efficiency of 56 per cent was observed at 9.3 bar indicated mean effective pressure and 1300 rev/min. The comparison between RCCI and conventional diesel showed a reduction in NO x by three orders of magnitude, a reduction in soot by a factor of six, and an increase in gross indicated efficiency of 16.4 per cent (i.e. 7.9 per cent more of the fuel energy was converted to useful work). The simulation results showed that the improvement in fuel conversion efficiency was due both to reductions in heat transfer losses and improved control over the start- and end-of-combustion.

Experimental investigation of piston heat transfer under conventional diesel and reactivity-controlled compression ignition combustion regimes

The piston of a heavy-duty single-cylinder research engine was instrumented with 11 fast-response surface thermocouples, and a commercial wireless telemetry system was used to transmit the signals from the moving piston. The raw thermocouple data were processed using an inverse heat conduction method that included Tikhonov regularization to recover transient heat flux. By applying symmetry, the data were compiled to provide time-resolved spatial maps of the piston heat flux and surface temperature. A detailed comparison was made between conventional diesel combustion and reactivity-controlled compression ignition combustion operations at matched conditions of load, speed, boost pressure, and combustion phasing. The integrated piston heat transfer was found to be 24% lower, and the mean surface temperature was 25 °C lower for reactivity-controlled compression ignition operation as compared to conventional diesel combustion, in spite of the higher peak heat release rate. Lower integrated piston heat transfer for reactivity-controlled compression ignition was found over all the operating conditions tested. The results showed that increasing speed decreased the integrated heat transfer for conventional diesel combustion and reactivity-controlled compression ignition. The effect of the start of injection timing was found to strongly influence conventional diesel combustion heat flux, but had a negligible effect on reactivity-controlled compression ignition heat flux, even in the limit of near top dead center high-reactivity fuel injection timings. These results suggest that the role of the high-reactivity fuel injection does not significantly affect the thermal environment even though it is important for controlling the ignition timing and heat release rate shape. The integrated heat transfer and the dynamic surface heat flux were found to be insensitive to changes in boost pressure for both conventional diesel combustion and reactivity-controlled compression ignition. However, for reactivity-controlled compression ignition, the mean surface temperature increased with changes in boost suggesting that equivalence ratio affects steady-state heat transfer.

Investigation of Injection Strategies to Improve High Efficiency RCCI Combustion With Diesel and Gasoline Direct Injection

Experiments were performed to investigate injection strategies for improving engine-out emissions of RCCI combustion in a heavy-duty diesel engine. Previous studies of RCCI combustion using port-injected low-reactivity fuel (e.g., gasoline or iso-octane) and direct-injected high-reactivity fuel (e.g., diesel or n-heptane) have reported greater than 56% gross indicated thermal efficiency while meeting the EPA 2010 heavy-duty PM and NOx emissions regulations in-cylinder. However, CO and UHC emissions were higher than in diesel combustion. This increase is thought to be caused by crevice flows of trapped low-reactivity fuel and lower cylinder wall temperatures. In the present study, both the low- and high-reactivity fuels were direct-injected, enabling more precise targeting of the low-reactivity fuel as well as independent stratification of equivalence ratio and reactivity. Experiments with direct-injection of both gasoline and diesel were conducted at 9 bar IMEP and compared to results from experiments with port-injected gasoline and direct-injected diesel at matched conditions. The results indicate that reductions in UHC, CO, and PM are possible with direct-injected gasoline, while maintaining similar gross indicated efficiency as well as NOx emissions well below the EPA 2010 heavy-duty limit. Additionally, experimental results were simulated using multi-dimensional modeling in the KIVA-3V code coupled to a Discrete Multi-Component fuel vaporization model. The simulations suggest that further UHC reductions can be made by using wider injector angles which direct the gasoline spray away from the crevices.Copyright