The Effect of Water Injection on the Control of In-Cylinder Pressure and Enhanced Power Output in a Four-Stroke Spark-Ignition Engine

Mingrui Wei, Thanh Sa Nguyen, Richard Fiifi Turkson, Guanlun Guo and Jinping Liu
Additional contact information
Mingrui Wei: Hubei Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Automotive Components, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, China
Thanh Sa Nguyen: Hubei Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Automotive Components, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, China
Richard Fiifi Turkson: Hubei Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Automotive Components, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, China
Guanlun Guo: Hubei Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Automotive Components, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, China
Jinping Liu: Hubei Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Automotive Components, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, China

Sustainability, 2016, vol. 8, issue 10, 1-22

Abstract: This paper presents the results for liquid water injection (WI) into a cylinder during the compression and expansion strokes of an internal combustion engine (ICE), with the aim of achieving an optimal in-cylinder pressure and improving power output using CFD simulation. Employing WI during the compression stroke at 80° of crank angle (CA) before top dead centre (bTDC) resulted in the reduction of compression work due to a reduction in peak compression pressure by a margin of about 2%. The decreased peak compression pressure also yielded the benefit of a decrease in NOx emission by a margin of 34% as well as the prevention of detonation. Using WI during the expansion stroke (after top dead centre–aTDC) revealed two stages of the in-cylinder pressure: the first stage involved a decrease in pressure by heat absorption, and the second stage involved an increase in the pressure as a result of an increase in the steam volume via expansion. For the case of water addition (WA 3.0%) and a water temperature of 100 °C, the percentage decrease of in-cylinder pressure was 2.7% during the first stage and a 2.5% pressure increase during the second stage. Water injection helped in reducing the energy losses resulting from the transfer of heat to the walls and exhaust gases. At 180° CA aTDC, the exhaust gas temperature decreased by 42 K, 89 K, and 136 K for WA 1.0, WA 2.0, and WA 3.0, respectively. Increasing the WI temperature to 200 °C resulted in a decrease of the in-cylinder pressure by 1.0% during the first stage, with an increase of approximately 4.0% in the second stage. The use of WI in both compression and expansion strokes resulted in a maximum increase of in-cylinder pressure of about 7%, demonstrating the potential of higher power output.

Keywords: CFD simulation; engine efficiency; heat losses; heat transfer; water addition; water injection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/10/993/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/10/993/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:8:y:2016:i:10:p:993-:d:79709

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().