Effects of Gasoline-Diesel Ratio on Combustion and Emission Characteristics of a Dual-Fuel CI Engine: A CFD Simulation

Recently, considerable efforts are made by the engine researches all over the world, focusing primarily on achieving ultra-low emissions of NOx (nitrogen oxides) and soot without any compromise to high thermal efficiency from dual-fuel engine. In this study, combustion performance and engine-out emission of a single cylinder gasoline-diesel dual-fuel engine are numerically investigated by employing a commercial computation fluid dynamics (CFD) software, especially developed for internal combustion engines modeling. Here, gasoline-diesel relative ratio has been varied to find its impacts on performance of a dual-fuel engine. The results show that, in-cylinder pressure, in-cylinder temperature and rate of heat release (ROHR) are increased with gradual increment in diesel relative to gasoline. Injecting higher amount of diesel directly inside the combustion chamber as pilot fuel might have facilitated the auto-ignition process by reducing the ignition delay and accelerated the premixed gasoline-air flame propagation. These led to shorter main combustion duration which is quite desirable to suppress the knock in dual-fuel engines. In addition, NOx emission is found to decrease with relatively higher percentage of diesel. On the other hand, with increasing gasoline ratio relative to diesel, combustion duration is prolonged significantly and led to incomplete combustion, thereby increasing unburned hydrocarbon (UHC) and carbon monoxide (CO).