Experimental Investigation of Natural Gas-Diesel Dual-Fuel RCCI in a Heavy-Duty Engine

Studies have shown that premixed combustion concepts such as PCCI and RCCI can achieve high efficiencies while maintaining low NOx and soot emissions. The RCCI (Reactivity Controlled Compression Ignition) concept use blending port-injected high-octane fuel with early direct injected high-cetane fuel to control auto-ignition. This paper describes studies on RCCI combustion using CNG and diesel as the high-octane and high-cetane fuels, respectively. The test was conducted on a heavy-duty single cylinder engine. The influence of injection timing and duration of the diesel injections was examined at 9 bar BMEP and1200 rpm. In addition, experiments were conducted using two different compression ratios, (14 and 17) with different loads and engine speeds. Results show both low NOx and almost zero soot emissions can be achieved but at the expense of increasing of unburned hydrocarbon emissions which could potentially be removed by catalytic after-treatment. CA50 generally occurred before TDC when using a compression ratio of 17. While the CA50 could be shifted to slightly after TDC by increasing the amount of EGR, this would lead to excessive HC emissions. A lower compression ratio of 14 was therefore used to retard the CA50 while maintaining acceptable UHC emissions