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Optimizing Large-Bore Engines
Turbocharger Center Helps
Advance Natural Gas Compression
by K.S. Chapman, Ph.D., Director Natural Gas Machinery Laboratory, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS
housands of reciprocating engines
T are used in the U.S. to drive com-
pressors that move natural gas
throughout the country. With few
exceptions these engines, built during a
time when emissions were not a national
concern, will need to have their perform-
ance improved to reduce emissions and to
increase fuel economy.
Rather than invest billions of dollars to
replace these engines, the U. S. natural gas
pipeline industry has invested in research
facilities to identify retrofit strategies and
technologies. One such laboratory is the
National Gas Machinery Laboratory (NGML),
an institute of the College of Engineering at
Kansas State University (K-State).
Central to this laboratory is the
Turbocharger Test & Research Facility
(TTRF), which was built primarily by funding
provided through Pipeline Research Council
International, Gas Technology Institute, indi-
vidual pipeline companies, the State of
Kansas, and two aftermarket turbocharger
companies. This test stand provides
researchers with extensive, and otherwise
not available, turbocharger operating data.
In conjunction with industry representa-
tives, NGML researchers identified two
major unaddressed issues that confront
engine system designers and operators
regarding engine air flow management: 1)
how to identify which turbocharger com-
pressor, diffuser, turbine blade set, and
nozzle ring will work on which engine;
and 2) how to determine the extent to
which an engine utilizes air to scavenge
exhaust products out of the cylinder.
Since that time, NGML researchers have
developed the methodology to optimally
match a turbocharger to an engine, and are
now working to identify the parameters and
methods of measurement needed to deter-
mine and impact the scavenging efficiency in
two-stroke cycle engines. This article explains
the underlying importance of turbocharger
matching, examines how scavenging efficien-
cy impacts performance, and identifies key
components that affect air flow through a
large-bore two-stroke cycle engine.
Turbocharger/
Engine Matching
The generic turbocharged engine system,
illustrated in Figure 1, shows the tur-
bocharger compressor, the turbocharger
turbine, and the engine. The compressor
compresses air to force the air into the
engine cylinder. The turbine extracts ener-
gy from the engine exhaust, and matches
the energy needed to power the compres-
36 Pipeline & Gas Journal/October 2002/pipelineandgasjournalonline.com
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Figure 1: General turbocharged engine
system.
sor. Complicating this relationship are the
compressor and turbine efficiencies, which
are not constants but rather vary with oper-
ating conditions. Figure 2 illustrates a typi-
cal centrifugal compressor map.
The pressure ratio across the compres-
sor is plotted on the vertical axis and the
air flow rate through the compressor is
plotted on the horizontal axis. The com-
pressor map contains lines of constant
speed and islands of constant efficiency.
In order to determine the efficiency of this
particular compressor, two of the follow-
ing are needed: the air flow rate through
the compressor, the pressure ratio, and/or
the compressor speed.
Another key aspect of the compressor
map is the surge line, which is shown on the
left side of the compressor map. This surge
line separates the regions where the com-
pressor can operate, and where it cannot. If
a compressor operates near the surge line, a
perturbation in the system may be enough
to throw the compressor into surge. When
surge occurs, the air flow reverses, and flows
backward through the compressor. The flow
then reverses again, and the process repeats.
As one might imagine, an engine does not
operate very well under this condition and
disastrous effects are a serious possibility,
including catastrophic failure.
The next step in the turbocharger match-
ing process is to couple the now-determined
compressor and turbine interaction opera-
tional constraints with the engines ability to
utilize the air that the turbocharger compres-
sor produces. To accomplish this, one must
understand the concept of an engine air
flow load line. The engine air flow load line,
or simply the load line, represents the resist-
ance to flow that is created by the engine
cylinder. The load line provides the func-
tional relationship between the air flow rate
through the engine and the pressure differ-
ence across the engine. Figure 3 graphically
illustrates an engine load line.
The vertical axis represents the pressure
ratio across the engine cylinder, i.e., air
Figure 2: Compressor performance map.
Figure 3: Example of an engine air flow
load line.
manifold pressure divided by exhaust
manifold pressure, and the horizontal axis
represents the air flow rate through the
engine. As expected, as the pressure ratio
increases, the air flow rate through the
engine also increases. The engine load
line, the compressor map, and the turbine
map provide all the needed information to
match a turbocharger with an engine.
An NGML short course for industry pro-
fessionals covers the turbocharger/engine
process in more detail. During the course,
participants have access to data collected
from the Turbocharger Test and Research
Facility, shown in Figure 4. Because of its
unique open-loop design, the test cell has
been used to successfully match tur-
bochargers to engines. This facility can han-
dle nearly any turbocharger used in the nat-
ural gas transmission industry, including
Clark and Cooper turbochargers, to create
turbocharger compressor and turbine maps.
Scavenging Efficiency
Once a designer and/or system operator
has determined that a turbocharger match-
es an engine, the next consideration is to
determine to what extent the engine and
turbocharger system can efficiently
remove all the exhaust products from the
engine cylinder. This is the concept of
scavenging efficiency.

Figure 4: The NGML Turbocharger Test and
Research Facility.
According to Heywood (1981), scaveng-
ing efficiency is the ratio between the mass
of air that is delivered to and retained in the
cylinder to the mass of charge trapped
inside the cylinder. Note that the charge
may contain exhaust products from the pre-
vious cycle. In the case where absolutely all
the exhaust products are removed, or scav-
enged, from the cylinder, the scavenging
efficiency is 100 percent. In most cases,
however, scavenging efficiencies near 75
percent are more common.
The scavenging efficiency is important
from the standpoint of emissions. A com-
monly used ratio is that for every 1 percent
increase in scavenging efficiency one can
expect a 10 percent decrease in NOX pro-
duction. Hence, the ability to fully under-
stand and control scavenging efficiency in
an engine remains critical with todays low
pollutant requirements. Researchers are
just beginning to identify the multitude of
parameters on which scavenging efficien-
cy depends. Once all the parameters are
identified, technologies can be developed
to 1) measure these parameters in the
field, and 2) make real time operating
adjustments to the engine system.
Components That Affect
Engine Air Flow
NGML researchers continue to focus their
efforts on the ability to fully understand and
measure scavenging, while work continues
to develop modified engine port geometries
and other low-cost components to control
scavenging in two-stroke cycle engines.
One primary barrier under investigation is
the inability to accurately represent the
flow rate through engine ports.
Figure 5 shows air flow through a typ-
ical port. As the flow rate becomes rela-
tively high, the main portion of the flow
stream separates from the sides of the
ports. This separation area contains a
recirculation flow regime that acts as a
barrier to flow through the port. The
effective flow area, AE, is smaller than
the geometric area of the port, AT. Since
the effective flow area is reduced, so is
the actual air flow rate through the port.
The challenge, then, is to quantify the
impact of the reduced effective area on
the air flow rate through the engine
ports via the development of a parame-
ter referred to as a discharge flow coef-
ficient. The discharge flow coefficient is
Figure 5: Effective area compared to true
geometric flow area.
a number less than one that represents
the ratio between the effective flow area
and the true geometric flow area.
Discharge coefficients are determined
from experimental data. Literature reveals
that the currently-available discharge coeffi-
cients are derived from ports that are a frac-
tion of the size of the ports used in large-bore
two-stroke cycle engines. Unfortunately, dis-
charge coefficients for the ports in large bore
engines have not been experimentally deter-
mined and reported in the literature.
To determine sets of experimentally
determined flow discharge coefficients,
NGML researchers designed and built a
port flow facility that can accommodate
engine cylinders used in the natural gas
transmission industry. The port flow facili-
ty was designed to develop flow discharge
coefficients for a wide variety of intake
and exhaust port geometries, and over a
complete range of scavenging styles.
Complete details of the design process are
provided by Chapman et al. (2001).
Figure 6 schematically shows the port
facility. The cylinder liner is positioned
within the facility and the air supply duct is
attached to the top of the cylinder liner. In
this particular schematic, the facility is set
up to test flow through the cylinder liner
and out one or more exhaust ports. The air
flow rate through the supply duct is meas-
ured using an ASME certified and reversible
flow venturi. The centrifugal compressor on
the left side of the diagram provides the air
to the cylinder. The final key component is
the piston positioner located below the
cylinder liner. The piston positioner pre-
cisely positions the piston within the liner.
The positioning system is accurate to with-
in 0.001 inches and provides the capability
to finely adjust how much a particular port
is covered by the piston. All temperature,
pressure, and flow data are recorded and
processed by the data acquisition system.
The discharge coefficient is determined
from the measured data by using the defini-
tion of the discharge coefficient and the
expression for ideal compressible flow
through a restriction. The resulting equation is:
The reference area, Aref, theoretically
represents geometrical flow area of the port.
At present, the flow discharge coeffi-
cients for the exhaust ports in a Clark HBA
cylinder have been measured at the NGML
flow facility. Preliminary results are shown
in Figure 7. The horizontal axis shows the
percent of the port that is uncovered by
Pipeline & Gas Journal/October 2002/pipelineandgasjournalonline.com
mrealkRT0
Cd =
( ) ( ( ) )
1 k-1
( )
P
P0
k
Aref P0k
2
k-1
1-
P
P0
k
Figure 6: Schematic of the port flow facility.
Figure 7: Preliminary discharge coefficient
data.
the piston, and the vertical axis shows the
flow discharge coefficient. The discharge
coefficient reaches a minimum when the
port is about 40 percent open, and then
increases when the port is completely
open and nearly closed. These results
clearly demonstrate how port design
impacts engine scavenging with associated
implications for engine performance. Port
modifications and/or complete redesigns
will achieve improved scavenging efficien-
cies and engine performance to values
greater than those measured today.
Author: K. S. Chapman is professor
of mechanical and nuclear engineering
and director of the National Gas
Machinery Laboratory at Kansas State
University. P&GJ
REFERENCES
Chapman, K.S., T.L. Brentano, D. Malicke,
and J. Brown, Design and Construction of a
Large Bore Engine Flow Bench to
Experimentally Determine Port Discharge
Coefficients for Better Prediction of Airflow,
ASME Fall Technical Conference Proceedings,
Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL,
September 23-26, 2001.
Heywood, J.B., Internal Combustion Engine
Fundamentals, McGraw-Hill Higher Education,
New York, 1981.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The port flow facility and TTRF at the NGML
are financially and technically supported by the
Pipeline Research Council International
Compressor Station Technical Committee
(CSTC) and the Gas Technology Institute (GTI).
The author acknowledges Exline, Inc. and EL
Paso Corp. for contributions of cylinder liners,
and Greg Beshouri, president, AETC for techni-
cal assistance. The review of this article and tech-
nical comments provided by Charles E. French,
program manager, compression and measurement
GTI, are greatly appreciated.
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