Scott J. Eaton

Performance Evaluation and Optimization of Diesel Fuel Properties and Chemistry in an HCCI Engine

The nine CRC fuels for advanced combustion engines (FACE fuels) have been evaluated in a simple, premixed HCCI engine under varying conditions of fuel rate, air-fuel ratio, and intake temperature. Engine performance was found to vary mainly as a function of combustion phasing as affected by fuel cetane and engine control variables. The data was modeled using statistical techniques involving eigenvector representation of the fuel properties and engine control variables, to define engine response and allow optimization across the fuels for best fuel efficiency. In general, the independent manipulation of intake temperature and air-fuel ratio provided some opportunity for improving combustion efficiency of a specific fuel beyond the direct effect of targeting the optimum combustion phasing of the engine (near 5 CAD ATDC). High cetane fuels suffer performance loss due to easier ignition, resulting in lower intake temperatures, which increase HC and CO emissions and result in the need for more advanced combustion phasing. The FACE fuels also varied in T90 temperature and % aromatics, independent of cetane number. T90 temperature was found to have an effect on engine performance when combined with high centane, but % aromatics did not, when evaluated independently of cetane and T90.

Effect of Narrow Cut Oil Shale Derived Distillates on HCCI Engine Performance

In this investigation, oil shale crude obtained from the Green River Formation in Colorado using Paraho Direct retorting was mildly hydrotreated and distilled to produce 7 narrow boiling point fuels of equal volumes. The resulting derived cetane numbers ranged between 38.3 and 43.9. Fuel chemistry and bulk properties strongly correlated with boiling point.