The North American oil and gas industry has experienced a market pull for dual fuel (DF) engines that can run on any ratio of fuels ranging from 100% diesel to a high proportion of field gas relative to diesel, while also meeting the US Tier 4 Nonroad emissions standards. A DF engine must meet complex and at times competing requirements in terms of performance, fuel tolerance, and emissions. The challenges faced in designing a DF engine to meet all of the performance and emissions requirements require a detailed understanding of the trade-offs for each pollutant. This paper will focus on the details of NOx formation for high substitution DF engines.
Experimental results have demonstrated that NOx emission trends (as a function of lambda) for DF engines differ from both traditional diesel engines and lean burn natural gas engines. For high energy substitution (>70%) conditions, NOx emissions are a function of the premixed gas lambda (λng) and contain a local minimum, with NOx increasing as lambda is either leaned or rich-ened beyond the local minimum which occurs from approximately λng = 1.7–1.85.
It is hypothesized that at richer conditions (λng < 1.7), NOx formed in the burning of gaseous fuel results in increased total NOx emissions. At leaner conditions (λng > 1.85) the NOx formed in the diesel post flame regions, as a result of increased oxygen availability, results in increased total NOx emissions. Between these two regions there are competing effects which result in relatively constant NOx.
