Syngas Laminar Flame Speed Computation and its Application to Gaseous Fueled Spark Ignited Engines Performance Prediction

Gaseous fueled spark ignited (SI) engines are often developed using pipeline quality natural gas as the fuel. However, natural gas engines are occasionally expected by customers to accommodate different fuel compositions when deployed in the field. Depending on the source or production processing of the fuel and the ambient conditions, gaseous fuels can have different levels of heavy hydrocarbons and/or significant levels of diluents when compared to natural gas. In recent years, there are increasing interests in using synthesis gas (syngas) from renewable sources in gaseous fueled spark ignition engines. This work investigated syngas compositions from different production processes and describes a methodology to predict engine performance using syngas. Syngas composition variations can provide different laminar flame speeds (LFS), which can result in changes in combustion burn rate, heat release rate and knock likelihood, if the engine combustion process is not optimized appropriately. It is challenging to obtain LFS data at the high pressure and temperature conditions that are characteristic of the piston engine combustion process. It has proven to be effective to employ a chemical kinetics solver using an appropriate chemical kinetics mechanism to obtain LFS values under piston engine combustion conditions. Alternative chemical kinetics mechanisms were investigated to identify one which best characterized combustion performance relative to detailed rig and engine measurements. With this appropriate chemical kinetics mechanism, LFS results are now used to guide natural gas engine combustion tuning when using syngas as a fuel. Engine performance is predicted in terms of NO_x emissions and knock likelihood using the in-house developed methodology.