Analysis of Ignition Behavior in a Turbocharged Direct Injection Dual Fuel Engine Using Propane and Methane as Primary Fuels

This paper presents experimental analyses of the ignition delay (ID) behavior for diesel-ignited propane and diesel-ignited methane dual fuel combustion. Two sets of experiments were performed at a constant speed (1800 rev/min) using a 4-cylinder direct injection diesel engine with the stock ECU and a wastegated turbocharger. First, the effects of fuel-air equivalence ratios (Φ_pilot ∼ 0.2–0.6 and Φ_overall ∼ 0.2–0.9) on IDs were quantified. Second, the effects of gaseous fuel percent energy substitution (PES) and brake mean effective pressure (BMEP) (from 2.5 to 10 bar) on IDs were investigated. With constant Φ_pilot (> 0.5), increasing Φ_overall with propane initially decreased ID but eventually led to premature propane autoignition; however, the corresponding effects with methane were relatively minor. Cyclic variations in the start of combustion (SOC) increased with increasing Φ_overall (at constant Φ_pilot), more significantly for propane than for methane. With increasing PES at constant BMEP, the ID showed a nonlinear (initially increasing and later decreasing) trend at low BMEPs for propane but a linearly decreasing trend at high BMEPs. For methane, increasing PES only increased IDs at all BMEPs. At low BMEPs, increasing PES led to significantly higher cyclic SOC variations and SOC advancement for both propane and methane. Finally, the engine ignition delay (EID) was also shown to be a useful metric to understand the influence of ID on dual fuel combustion.