Zhijie Zhu

Amid increasingly stringent global environmental regulations, marine engines are undergoing an essential transition from conventional fossil fuels to alternative fuels to meet escalating regulatory requirements. This study evaluates the effects of injection pressure, the timing of ammonia injection, and the pre-injection of ammonia on combustion and emissions, aiming to identify optimal operational parameters for low-speed marine engines. A three-dimensional model of a large-bore, low-speed marine engine in a high-pressure diffusion mode was developed based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Simulations were conducted under 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% loads with a high ammonia energy substitution rate of 95%. The results indicate that, compared to traditional pure diesel operation, adjusting the injection pressure and the ammonia injection timing, along with employing appropriate pre-injection strategies, significantly enhances in-cylinder pressure and temperature, improves thermal efficiency, and reduces specific fuel consumption. Additionally, the dual-fuel strategy using diesel and ammonia effectively reduces nitrogen oxide emissions by up to 37.5% and carbon dioxide emissions by 93.7%.

This paper studies the generation process and emission characteristics of soot from Marine diesel engine. On the basis of Particulate size mimic (PSM) detailed soot model, the parameters related to soot generation obtained from the reaction mechanism calculation of 3 surrogate of different carbon chain length: n-heptane, n-tetradecane and n-tetradecane-toluene were compared and analyzed including precursor of soot, quality and density of soot, particle size distribution of empirical soot model. The results show that the soot nucleation stage of n-tetradecane-toluene mechanism was slightly more consistent than that of n-tetradecane mechanism with the experimental results, far more consistent than that of n-heptane mechanism. The intensity of surface growth and aggregation stage is greater, which is reflected in the soot precursor: acetylene and A4, and leads to that the soot produced by the mechanism of n-tetradecane and n-tetradecane-toluene is small in quality but large in quantity. The particle size distribution calculated by n-tetradecane and n-tetradecane-toluene mechanism is closer to the experimental data than that calculated by n-heptane mechanism. Then combustion process of n-tetradecane and n-tetradecane-toluene mechanism is more suitable for marine engine, which is reflected in the higher temperature and the smaller equivalent ratio in the cylinder.

Low-speed two-stroke marine diesel engines dominate the modern global long-distance transportation market; with the increasingly stringent regulations, the combustion and emissions of these engines is gaining intense interest. The primary objective of the present study was to understand the effects of air-fuel mixing by pilot injection strategy on the combustion and emission characteristics of the marine diesel engines through a numerical study. Specifically, a computational fluid dynamic (CFD) model was established and validated by experimental data for a typical low-speed two-stroke marine diesel engine. The combustion parameters under different stages were analyzed, including mean in-cylinder temperature and pressure, indicated thermal efficiency (ITE), indicated specific fuel consumption (ISFC), and distribution of fuel-air mixture. Results indicated that, due to the premixing effect, the pilot injection produced unburned soot from the main injection’s ignition as well as decrease the intervals between the middle and final stages of combustion, thus raising the in-cylinder temperature. The interaction between the reduction of soot particles resulted from the increased temperature, and the decrease of the stage intervals led to lower overall boundary heat loss, which improved the effective thermal efficiency. The pilot injection timing and quality, respectively, showed quadratic and linear impact modes on engine performance and emissions.