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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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5 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

Additive-Mixing Fuel Injection (AMFI): A device for robust control and improved performance of high-efficiency LTGC engines

Low-temperature gasoline combustion (LTGC) engines can provide high efficiencies with very low NOx and particulate emissions. Despite these major advantages, methods for controlling LTGC combustion timing, achieving robust autoignition, and good low-load performance have challenged the development of practical LTGC engines. A key reason is that the ideal reactivity of the fuel varies with operating conditions, with low-reactivity fuels working well at high loads and higher-reactivity fuels working better at low loads. This article introduces a new technique called Additive Mixing Fuel Injection (AMFI) that adjusts the reactivity of the gasoline to obtain good performance over the operating map. Moreover, AMFI can provide robust combustion-timing control because it precisely meters very small amounts (0.01–0.6 mm 3 ) of an ignition-enhancing additive into the fuel each engine cycle. The additive used was 2-ethylhexyl nitrate (EHN), a common, inexpensive diesel-fuel ignition improver, but other additives could be used. Because additive amounts are so small, a 2-gal reservoir would be sufficient for medium-duty applications with refilling only at service intervals of about 8000 mi. The AMFI system has been installed on a single-cylinder LTGC research engine and demonstrated to provide robust combustion-timing control over wide ranges of combustion phasing, fueling rate, intake boost, engine speed, and intake temperature. AMFI also increases the fuel’s reactivity sufficiently to greatly reduce or eliminate the need for charge heating, simplifying engine design and significantly increasing thermal efficiency and the maximum load at low-boost conditions. The nitrogen in the EHN produced a modest increase in NOx, but it was mitigated by lower intake temperatures, and NOx emissions remained very low. Finally, the additive increases the sensitivity of autoignition reactions to variations in the local fuel/air mixture within the charge. This allows the use of controlled fuel stratification for improved LTGC-engine performance, and its potential to improve low-load operation was demonstrated.

Dec, John E.↗
DOE OSTI2024

Practical low-temperature gasoline combustion for very high efficiency off-road, medium- and heavy-duty engines

Low-temperature gasoline combustion (LTGC) with additive-mixing fuel injection (AMFI) is a new combustion strategy that has been demonstrated to deliver 9%–25% better brake thermal efficiency than similar-sized market-leading diesel engines over the operating map. Moreover, the LTGC-AMFI engine shows near-zero smoke, and NOx emissions are 4–100 times lower than those of a diesel, sufficiently low that no aftertreatment, or only passive NOx aftertreatment, would be sufficient (diesel exhaust fluid is not required). LTGC-AMFI combustion is based on kinetically controlled compression ignition of a dilute charge with a variable amount of low-to-moderate fuel stratification. Fast combustion control is provided by adding minute amounts of an ignition-enhancing additive into the fuel each engine cycle to control its reactivity. This strategy was used to operate a medium-duty (MD) LTGC-AMFI engine at loads from idle to 16.3 bar BMEP and speeds from 600 to 2400 rpm with regular E10 gasoline, which covers nearly the entire operating map of a typical MD engine. Turbine-out temperatures were sufficient for an oxidation catalyst to control hydrocarbon and CO emissions. Autonomie simulations over the GEM ARB Transient and the GEM 55 mph Cruise driving cycles for class-6 trucks using this technology showed fuel economies of 8.1 and 11.4 mpg-gasoline-equivalent, respectively, corresponding to 18.6% and 13.4% improvements over a similar-size diesel engine. Engine-out NOx emissions were 0.024 and 0.01 g/bhp-h, respectively, well below current U.S. emission standards. These results show that switching from diesel to LTGC-AMFI engines would greatly reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for off-road, MD and HD applications, which will continue to rely on combustion engines because electrification is not practical in the foreseeable future. Finally, with their reduced fuel consumption, the lower cost of gasoline compared to diesel fuel, and much lower aftertreatment costs, LTGC-AMFI engines also offer a significantly lower total cost of ownership.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Development and evaluation of a skeletal mechanism for EHN additized gasoline mixtures in large Eddy simulations of HCCI combustion

Advanced Low Temperature Combustion modes, such as the Sandia proposed Additive-Mixing Fuel Injection (AMFI), can unlock significant potential to boost fuel conversion efficiency and ultimately improve the energy conversion of internal combustion engines. This is a novel improved combustion process that is enabled by supplying small (<5%) variable amounts of autoignition improver to the fuel to enhance the engine operation and control. Common, diesel-fuel ignition-quality enhancing additive, 2-ethylexyl nitrate (EHN), is doped into gasoline to enable Sandia LTGC + AMFI combustion. This manuscript focuses on the development of a reduced sub-mechanism for EHN chemical kinetics at engine relevant conditions that is implemented into a skeletal mechanism for chemical kinetic studies of gasoline surrogate fuels. The mechanism validation utilized zero-dimensional numerical simulations and comparison to shock tube ignition-delay data of pure and EHN-doped n-heptane. Additional validation is presented with Homogeneous Charge Compression-Ignition (HCCI) engine data of pure and EHN-doped research-grade E10 gasoline. Then, the mechanism was deployed in a 3-D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) using Large Eddy Simulations (LES) to model the HCCI engine experiments of 0.4% vol EHN additized E10 gasoline at several equivalence ratios. Simulations showed a very good performance of the mechanism, and the model accurately reproduced (a) the ignition point, (b) combustion phasing, (c) combustion duration, and (d) the peak of the heat release rates of the engine experiments. The results show that EHN promotes Low-Temperature Heat Release, ultimately driving the gasoline to autoignite at thermodynamic conditions where the fuel would not otherwise ignite. Overall, this work demonstrates a viable reduced chemical-kinetic mechanism for EHN and shows that it can be combined with a skeletal gasoline mechanism for CFD-LES analysis of well-mixed LTGC that matches well with experimental results. The CFD-LES analysis also shows the spatial distribution of EHN-fuel interactions that control the autoignition throughout the combustion chamber.

Guleria, Gaurav↗
DOE OSTI2022

Alkyl dialkoxyalkanoates as bioderived, high cetane diesel fuels

A fuel for an internal combustion engine includes a C 5 to C 30 dialkoxyalkanoate corresponding to formula (I), wherein the R 1 group is —H or a —CH 3 group, the R 2 and R 2 ′ groups are alkyl groups independently selected to have 1 to 9 carbon atoms; and the R 3 group is selected to have 1 to 9 carbon atoms. The compounds described herein may be used as neat fuels or mixed fuels (with diesel, biodiesel, jet fuel, marine fuel or other fuel compounds) in autoignition or spark ignition engines, such as diesel engines, gasoline (spark ignition) engines, MCCI, Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) engines, or more generally in Low-Temperature Gasoline Combustion (LTGC) engines (using gasoline-like fuels), that have the high-efficiency advantages of HCCI but can operate with some level of charge inhomogeneities. Methods of making these compounds are environmentally friendly and can be done in a continuous manner.

Myllenbeck, Nicholas↗