Download NON-SOOTING, LOW FLAME TEMPERATURE MIXING-CONTROLLED DI DIESEL COMBUSTION. Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle
Methods of producing non-sooting, low flame temperature diesel combustion were investigated in an optically-accessible, quiescent constant-volume combustion vessel under mixing-controlled diesel combustion conditions. Combustion and soot processes of single, isolated fuel jets were studied after auto-ignition and transient premixed combustion and while the injector was fully-open (i.e. during the mixing-controlled phase of heat release for diesel combustion). The investigation showed that small injector tip orifices could be used to produce non-sooting and low flame temperature combustion simultaneously. The use of small orifices was shown to enable non-sooting and low flame temperature combustion in two different ways as summarized below. A more detailed description of the experimental methods and results is provided in Ref. [1-3]. First, using an injector tip with a 50 micron orifice and ambient oxygen concentrations as low as 10% (simulating the use of extensive EGR), a fuel jet was non-sooting at typical diesel ambient temperatures (1000 K). Second, using the same injector tip at a reduced ambient gas temperature (850 K), but with 21% oxygen, it was shown that non-sooting, mixing-controlled combustion occurred at the lift-off length in a fuel-air mixture with a cross-sectional average equivalence ratio of approximately 0.6-suggesting that the quasi-steady combustion was fuel-lean and thereby avoided the formation of a diffusion flame. The adiabatic flame temperature with reduced ambient oxygen concentration or fuel-lean combustion was approximately 2000 K, compared to typical diesel flame temperatures that exceed 2600 K. The 50 micron orifice results above were obtained using a No. 2 diesel fuel. However, using an oxygenated fuel (20 wt% oxygen), the investigation showed that the same low temperature combustion, either with reduced ambient oxygen concentration or fuel-lean combustion, was realized with a 100 micron orifice. Although these single, isolated jets do not have jet-jet interactions that would occur in realistic engines, the results are useful for understanding limiting-case behavior of single-jet mixing and combustion during an injection event. The non-sooting and low flame temperature mixing-controlled combustion realized using small orifice tips suggests that the use of small orifices offers the potential for a simultaneous soot and NOx reduction in an engine, much like diesel HCCI combustion. However, further research is needed to determine whether these methods could be successfully implemented in real engines.