Numerical and Experimental Investigation on Performance of Dual Fuel D87 Engine

Conventional compression ignition internal combustion engines can easily be converted to a dual fuel mode of operation using natural gas as the main fuel and diesel oil injection as pilot to initiate the mixture or as a part of main fuel to improve the power output by changing the percentage of diesel oil to natural gas. Natural gas is abundant and relatively cheap alternative fuel with capability of reducing emission levels considerably. In order to examine the combustion characteristic of a heavy duty diesel engine which is locally produced, called D87, in dual fuel mode of operation. A detail performance analysis has been carried out where the main fuel is natural gas and diesel oil is as pilot injection. A reduced detailed chemical kinetics combustion model is combined with a partially stirred combustion model which is inserted in KIVA3V2 code to predict the knock and performance characteristics of the engine. Also, interaction between fuels during the combustion has been studied. Influence of parameters such as intake pressure and temperature on occurrence of knock and the effect of initial swirl ratio on engine performance parameters such in cylinder heat release rate, temperature-pressure and emission levels have been investigated. Appropriate computational grid for KIVA has been generated by ANSYS ICEM CFD commercial software. The developed model results are compared and validated with experimental results available during development tests.