Reduction of Cold-Start Emissions for a Micro Combined Heat and Power Plant

Tammo Zobel, Christian Schürch, Konstantinos Boulouchos and Christopher Onder
Additional contact information
Tammo Zobel: Institute for Dynamic Systems & Control, ETH Zurich, Sonneggstrasse 3, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland
Christian Schürch: Aerothermochemistry and Combustion Systems Laboratory, ETH Zurich, Sonneggstrasse 3, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland
Konstantinos Boulouchos: Aerothermochemistry and Combustion Systems Laboratory, ETH Zurich, Sonneggstrasse 3, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland
Christopher Onder: Institute for Dynamic Systems & Control, ETH Zurich, Sonneggstrasse 3, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 8, 1-18

Abstract: Decentralized power generation by combined heat and power plants becomes increasingly popular as a measure to advance the energy transition. In this context, a substantial advantage of small combined heat and power plants is based on the relatively low pollutant emissions. However, a large proportion of the pollutant emissions is produced during a cold-start. This fact is not reflected in governmental and institutional emission guidelines, as these strongly focus on the emission levels under steady-state conditions. This study analyzes the spark advance, the reference air/fuel ratio and an electrically heated catalyst in terms of their potential to reduce the cold-start emissions of a micro combined heat and power plant which uses a natural gas fueled reciprocating internal combustion engine as prime mover and a three-way catalytic converter as aftertreatment system. Based on these measures, control approaches were developed that account for the specific operating conditions of the class of small combined heat and power plants, e.g., full-load operation and flexible, demand-driven runtimes. The experimental data demonstrates that even solutions with marginal adaptation/integration effort can reduce cold-start emissions to a great extent.

Keywords: micro combined heat and power; cold-start emissions; natural gas; internal combustion engine; spark advance; air/fuel ratio; electrically heated catalyst (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: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/8/1862/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/8/1862/ (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:jeners:v:13:y:2020:i:8:p:1862-:d:344240

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

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