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Lecture 6 PDF
Lecture 6 PDF
Table A-2
Carbon Monoxide
Equivalence Ratio
Example contd
Even when the flow of air and fuel into an engine is controlled exactly at stoichiometric
conditions, combustion will not be "perfect," and components other than CO2, H2O, and
N2 are found in the exhaust products.
One major reason for this is the extremely short time available for each engine cycle,
which often means that less than complete mixing of the air and fuel is obtained.
Some fuel molecules do not find an oxygen molecule to react with, and small quantities
of both fuel and oxygen end up in the exhaust.
SI engines have a combustion efficiency in the range of 95% to 98% for lean mixtures and
lower values for rich mixtures, where there is not enough air to react all the fuel (Fig. 41).
CI engines operate lean overall and typically have combustion efficiencies of about 98%.
Combustion Efficiency
Chemical Equilibrium
Chemical Equilibrium
Equilibrium constants for many reactions can be found in thermodynamic
textbooks or chemical handbooks, tabulated in logarithmic form (In or Log ke)'An
abbreviated table can be found in the Appendix of this book (Table A-3).
Ke is very dependent on temperature, changing many orders of magnitude over
the temperature range experienced in an IC engine.
As Ke gets larger, equilibrium is more towards the right (products).
This is the maximizing of entropy. For hydrocarbon fuels reacting with oxygen (air)
at high engine temperatures, the equilibrium constant is very large, meaning that
there are very few reactants (fuel and air) left at final equilibrium.
However, at these high temperatures another chemical phenomenon takes place
that affects the overall combustion process in the engine and what ends up in the
engine exhaust.
Table A-3
Chemical
Equilibrium
Constants
Chemical Equilibrium
Examination of the equilibrium constants in Table A-3 shows that dissociation of
normally stable components will occur at these high engine temperatures.
CO2 dissociates to CO and O, O2 dissociates to mono-atomic O, N2 dissociates to
mono-atomic N, etc.
This not only affects chemical combustion, but is a cause of one of the major
emission problems of IC engines.
Nitrogen as diatomic N2 does not react with other substances, but when it
dissociates to monatomic nitrogen at high temperature it readily reacts with
oxygen to form nitrogen oxides, NO and NO2, a major pollutant from
automobiles.
Chemical Equilibrium
To avoid generating large amounts of nitrogen oxides, combustion temperatures
in automobile engines are lowered, which reduces the dissociation of N2.
Unfortunately, this also lowers the thermal efficiency of the engine.
Exhaust Dew Point Temperature
When exhaust gases of an IC engine are cooled below their dew point
temperature, water vapor in the exhaust starts to condense to liquid.
It is common to see water droplets come out of an automobile exhaust pipe
when the engine is first started and the pipe is cold.
Very quickly the pipe is heated above the dew point temperature, and
condensing water is then seen only as vapor when the hot exhaust is cooled by
the surrounding air, much more noticeable in the cold winter time.
Example contd
Saturated Water
Pressure Table
Example contd
Saturated Water
Temperature Table
Example contd
Combustion Temperature
Combustion Temperature
Heat Input
Example contd
Example contd
Table A-2
Reference:
Engineering Fundamentals of the Internal Combustion Engines, by W. W.
Pulkrabek, 2nd edition, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River (2004).