Fangyu Zhang

The wall-impingement phenomenon significantly impacts mixture formation, combustible performance, and pollutant release in DISI engines. However, there is insufficient knowledge regarding the behavior of fuel adhesion. Thus, here, we examine adhesive fuel features at various injection pressure levels (5 and 10 MPa) in a cross-flow field (0 to 50 m/s). The RIM optical method was employed to track the expansion and distribution of fuel adhesion. As a result, adhesive fuel features such as area, mass, thickness, and lifetime were assessed. Postprocessing image analysis reveals that fuel adhesion was consistently thinner at the edge region. With increased injection pressure, the cross flow led to a rise in the fuel-adhesion area and mass; however, small changes in pressure did not affect adhesive thickness. Adhesive thickness significantly decreased in the cross flow, indicating enhanced evaporation potential. Furthermore, lifetime prediction was conducted to quantitatively evaluate the impact of cross flow and injection pressure upon fuel adhesion, which could be calculated by examining the decreasing trend in adhesive area. Results show that the lifetime was dramatically reduced with higher cross-flow velocity, and slightly decreased with lower injection pressure. Under injection pressure of 10 MPa, the adhesive lifetime in the cross-flow field of 50 m/s was reduced by 77.5% compared with the static flow field (0 m/s). The experimental results provide corresponding guidance for low-carbon fuel utilization and emission reduction in DISI engines.

In order to support the development of a novel linear engine generator (LEG), the characteristics of ammonia/hydrogen premixed combustion are studied by using a detailed chemical kinetics mechanism. The ammonia combustion mechanism is identified among several mechanisms and validated with published experimental data. A parametric analysis is carried out under LEG typical working conditions to study the effects of equivalence ratio (0.80–1.60), hydrogen blending ratio (0.0–0.6), initial temperature (300–700 K) and initial pressure (1–20 bar) on premixed laminar flame speed, ignition delay and key flame species concentrations. It is shown that an equivalence ratio of around 1.10–1.20 is beneficial to both ammonia flame stability and lower NOx emission. Ignition delay is reduced with the increase in hydrogen blending ratio, initial temperature and initial pressure. At a certain initial temperature and initial pressure, the effects of hydrogen blending ratio can be negligible for over 50% hydrogen in the fuel. Under higher pressure (>10 bar), the initial pressure has a minor influence on the ignition delay reduction. It is also found that the high-pressure high-temperature environment contributes to reducing NO emission considerably in ammonia/hydrogen combustion, which implies the potential of a low NOx LEG fuelled by ammonia/hydrogen.