Hydrogen energy share enhancement in a heavy duty diesel engine under RCCI combustion fueled with natural gas and diesel oil

The aim of this study is to enhance hydrogen energy share in a RCCI engine. The engine under consideration is fueled with diesel oil and natural gas enriched with hydrogen or syngas and is set to operate at 9.4 bar gross indicated mean effective pressure (Mid-Load). The syngas used in this study consists of hydrogen and carbon monoxide which are mixed together on a volumetric ratio of 80:20. A fixed amount of diesel oil is injected per cycle into the combustion chamber of the RCCI engine. Based on two different strategies, hydrogen or syngas mixed with exhaust gas recirculation are admitted gradually along with natural gas while ensuring that always the low temperature combustion concept is fulfilled. The RCCI engine operation is simulated through commercial software coupled with chemical kinetics solver. The simulation results show that without any engine diesel knock occurrence, by adding hydrogen to natural gas, the share of hydrogen energy could be increased up to 40.43% while the engine power output is reduced only by about 1%. Also, syngas addition to natural gas causes that the share of hydrogen energy could be increased up to 27.05% while improves the engine power more than 4%. At the same time, by considering two mentioned strategies, the overall hydrocarbon fuel consumption per cycle can be reduced by up to 46.60% and 33.86%, respectively. Moreover, having the gross indicated efficiency of well over 50% and significant reduction in the engine emissions compared to RCCI combustion fueled solely with natural gas and diesel oil are achievable. (C) 2020 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.