Effect of Fuel and Air Dilution on Syngas Combustion in an Optical SI Engine

S.D. Martinez-Boggio, S.S. Merola, P. Teixeira Lacava, A. Irimescu and P.L. Curto-Risso
Additional contact information
S.D. Martinez-Boggio: Instituto de Mecánica y Producción Industrial, Universidad de La República, Montevideo 11300, Uruguay
S.S. Merola: Istituto Motori, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, 80125 Napoli, Italy
P. Teixeira Lacava: Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica, São Jose dos Campos 12228-900, Brazil
A. Irimescu: Istituto Motori, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, 80125 Napoli, Italy
P.L. Curto-Risso: Instituto de Mecánica y Producción Industrial, Universidad de La República, Montevideo 11300, Uruguay

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 8, 1-23

Abstract: To mitigate the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, energy production processes must change from fossil to renewable resources. Bioenergy utilization from agricultural residues can be a step towards achieving this goal. Syngas (fuel obtained from biomass gasification) has been proved to have the potential of replacing fossil fuels in stationary internal combustion engines (ICEs). The processes associated with switching from traditional fuels to alternatives have always led to intense research efforts in order to have a broad understanding of the behavior of the engine in all operating conditions. In particular, attention needs to be focused on fuels containing relatively high concentrations of hydrogen, due to its faster propagation speed with respect to traditional fossil energy sources. Therefore, a combustion study was performed in a research optical SI engine, for a comparison between a well-established fuel such as methane (the main component of natural gas) and syngas. The main goal of this work is to study the effect of inert gases in the fuel mixture and that of air dilution during lean fuelling. Thus, two pure syngas blends (mixtures of CO and H 2 ) and their respective diluted mixtures (CO and H 2 with 50vol% of inert gases, CO 2 and N 2 ) were tested in several air-fuel ratios (stoichiometric to lean burn conditions). Initially, the combustion process was studied in detail by traditional thermodynamic analysis and then optical diagnostics were applied thanks to the optical access through the piston crown. Specifically, images were taken in the UV-visible spectrum of the entire cycle to follow the propagation of the flame front. The results show that hydrogen promotes flame propagation and reduces its distortion, as well as resulting in flames evolving closer to the spark plug. All syngas blends show a stable combustion process, even in conditions of high air and fuel dilution. In the leanest case, real syngas mixtures present a decrease in terms of performance due to significant reduction in volumetric efficiency. However, this condition strongly decreases pollutant emissions, with nitrogen oxide (NO x ) concentrations almost negligible.

Keywords: syngas; optical techniques; SI engines; electricity generation; lean combustion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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