4.2. Effect of alternative fuels on RCCI performance and emissions
4.2.1. Heavy-duty engine natural gas e diesel RCCI operation
To operate at moderate to high loads with gasoline/diesel dual fuel, high amounts of EGR or an ultra-low compression ratio had been found to be required. Considering that both of these ap- proaches inherently lower thermodynamic efficiency, Nieman et al. [91] replaced the gasoline with natural gas as the low reactivity fuel and examined the sensitivity of RCCI combustion at high load to injection system parameters. Due to the lower reactivity of natural gas compared to gasoline, it was proposed to be a better fuel for RCCI combustion to control the maximum pressure rise rate by using the large reactivity gradient that exists between these two fuels.
A nondominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) along with the CFD code described in 2.1.3 was used to perform optimization for a wide range of engine operating conditions. Engine design parameters that were controlled by the genetic algorithm included the fraction of total fuel that was premixed (methane), the timing of the two diesel injections, the amount of diesel in each injection, the diesel fuel injection pressure, and the EGR percentage. The objec- tive of the optimization was to simultaneously minimize soot, NOx,
CO, and UHC emissions, as well as ISFC and ringing intensity.
Typical heavy-duty engine load/speed combinations at six oper- ating points from 4 to 23 bar IMEP and 800e1800 rev/min were investigated on the test engine shown in Fig. 1 and optimized. The results emphasized that precise injection control was needed for combustion control. The load speed combinations, which ranged from low-load/low-speed to high-load/high-speed, proposed by Dempsey et al. [21] were selected for the optimization of natural gas/diesel operation [91]. At each operating condition, the engine
speed, fuel energy introduced into the cylinder, and intake pressure were fixed throughout the optimization. The conditions, the cor- responding IMEP values, and variable design parameters are listed in Table 38.