Combustion Characteristics of Compressed Natural Gas in a Direct Microchannel-Injection Engine under Various Operating Conditions

摘要

The combustion characteristics of compressed natural gas (CNG) in a direct microchannel-injection engine under various operating conditions were investigated. In this study, a novel idea for direct CNG microchannel injection was realized with spark plug fuel injector (SPFI). It is a device developed to convert engine to CNG direct injection (DI) operation with minimal cost and technical simplicity. It was installed and tested on a Ricardo E6 single cylinder engine with compression ratio of 10.5:1 without modification on the original engine structure. The engine test was carried out under various operation conditions at 1100 rpm. Burning rates of CNG were measured using normalized combustion pressure method by which the normalized pressure rise due to combustion is equivalent to the mass fraction burned (MFB) at the specific crank angle. The results showed that the MFB of CNG direct injection is substantially faster but initially slower than the ones of port injection. The optimal fuel injection and ignition timings are 190°CA ATDC and 25°CA BTDC respectively. The optimal injection pressure was 6 MPa. Combustion durations were not changed with different injection pressures but ignition delay was affected. There was no direct correlation between injection pressure and ignition delay which is most probably due to the effect of charge flow difference. Changing mixture stoichiometry affects the magnitude of ignition delay. Combustion duration, on the other hand increases with leaner mixture.