Research on the performance of an electronically controlled spark ignition engine fuelled with hydrogen-rich gases

Abstract

Because of the storage and safety of hydrogen on board vehicles, there still exist many problems; this paper introduces a system of hydrogen-rich gases and its application to an electronically controlled spark ignition engine. The hydrogen-rich gases from the designed reformer are produced by methanol dissociated by the heat recycled from the exhaust emissions of an engine. The effects of the hydrogen-rich gases on the performances of the engine were investigated for lean-burning operations. The test results indicate that the engine can operate using a very lean fuel mixture owing to the wide ignition limits of the hydrogen-rich gases. When the excessive air-to-fuel ratio is higher than 1.4, the nitrogen oxide emissions are reduced by 90%, the carbon monoxide emissions are ultra-low, and the hydrocarbon emissions are at nearly the same level as those produced from a gasoline engine. In addition, while maintaining the power output of the engine, lean burning of the hydrogen-rich gases and partial recycling of the exhaust heat significantly improve the brake thermal efficiency of methanol.

An Investigation of the Kinetic Modeling and Ignition Delay Time of Methanol—Syngas Fuel

“…Lean combustion enables the fuel to burn completely, which further increases the thermal efficiency, and may reduce the emissions of CO (Liu and Dumitrescu, 2019). In addition, lean-burn can reduce the combustion temperature, thus reducing NO x emissions (Yao et al, 2014). Considering the research of Nguyen and Verhelst (2017), Gong et al (2019), Zhang et al (2014), and other scholars on the use of methanol blended with hydrogen as a fuel for internal combustion engines, as well as our previous research (Jiang et al, 2019), the results show that under suitable working conditions and parameters, blending methanol and dissociated methanol gas as a fuel can improve the efficiency and reduce emissions of internal combustion engines.…”