Performance and emission characteris cs of a methane fueled HCCI

engine at various injec on loca ons and opera ng speeds.

Review by: Gupta Parth Dharmendrakumar
203100017

IC engines are ubiquitous everywhere for their applica ons as a prime mover, power
genera on, etc. Hence improving the e ciency and controlling their emissions is necessary.
SI engines have low emissions but their thermal e ciency is low while CI engines have poor
emissions characteris cs. Hence the need to look for gaseous fuels. Studies shows a dras c
reduc on in toxic emissions with high availability and low price makes them a very good
alterna ve. In this paper, authors have used methane as a fuel for CI engine. However,
because of high autoigni on temperature and low cetane number of methane, an
addi onal igni on improver, Di-ethyl Ether (DEE) is added. The fuel as a mixture of methane
and DEE is injected at two separate loca ons: 1) Into the Port, 2) Manifold, 10 cm away
from the inlet port during suc on stroke. The experiment is conducted to nd the thermal
e ciency and the emission characteris cs at two speeds of 1800 and 1900 rpm. Op mum
constant methane ow of 12lpm is used.
The engine used if 4 stroke, CI engine modi ed to run in HCCI mode. A starter motor is
coupled to the engine which is then connected to the eddy dynamometer. Temperature
sensors are placed to measure the inlet and exhaust temperatures. The exhaust gas is
par ally extracted and sent into AVL which reads and analyses the smoke and gas
emissions.
Port injec on at 1800 shows higher thermal e ciency, while manifold injec on at 1900 rpm
shows higher thermal e ciency than port injec on. This can be explained as at low speeds,
manifold injec on can cause resistance to air ow which will increase the overall
equivalence ra o.
Port injec on was found to be causing higher hydrocarbon (HC) emissions. This can be due
to incomplete mixing due to the close proximity of the injec on to the cylinder.
CO emissions for the manifold injec on was found to be lower than the port injec on at
both the speeds.
NOx emissions were low for both, because of low temperature opera on of HCCI engine,
however port injec on showed higher emissions.
ffi
ti
ti
ti
ti
ti
ti
ti

ti
ti
ti

fl
ti
ti
ffi
ti
ti
ti
ti
ti
ffi
ti
ti

fi
fl
ffi
ti

ffi
ti
ti

ti
ti
ti
fi
ti

ti
ti
ti