2nd World Engineering Congress Sarawak, Malaysia,22-25 July 2002

2002 WEC

Effect Of Air Fuel Mixer Design On Engine Performance And Exhaust Emission Of A CNG Fuelled Vehicles
Rosli Abu Bakar, Azhar Abdul Aziz and Mardani Ali Sera
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 UTM Skudai Johor Darul Tazim, Malaysia rosliab@fkm.utm.my

ABSTRACT: In this study, experiments were carried out to investigate the effect of air/fuel mixer on the engine performance and exhaust emission of a CNG fuelled engine. Three types of mixers were fabricated to create the turbulent effect of an air-fuel mixture. The modification is based on the mixing characteristics and turbulent coefficient. For this purposed, a 1.5 litre gasoline based engine has been developed altogether with data acquisition system for engine performance test. Emission results also evaluated. The engine running at 1000, 1500 2000, 2500 and 3000 rpm at wide-open throttle. The results showed that CNG engine produced lower performance compared to that of gasoline. However, the modified mixer affected the performance and the exhaust emission of a CNG fuelled vehicle. On the emission results, the CNG fuelled engine produce lowers CO, CO2 and HC compared to gasoline fuel engine at all speed.

INTRODUCTION Natural gas vehicles (NGVs) that operate on compressed natural gas (CNG) fuel are expected to find widespread use from the standpoint of promoting global environment protection and effective utilization of energy resources. This is because NGVs can be effective in preventing air pollution and global warming and also in coping with the future depletion of oil resources. CNG Properties Natural gas has a low carbon (C) weight per unit of energy. Because of this among others reasons, emissions of CO2 greenhouse gas can be reduced by more than 20% compared with gasoline at equivalent level of work. Moreover, engineout emissions of HC and NOx can also be reduced below the corresponding levels for gasoline engines. One reasons for this is there is a little wall flow fuel in the intake manifold even at low temperature because of the gaseous state of CNG. Another reason is that combustion temperature tends to be lower than with gasoline engine. In addition, CNG was used with methane gas was expected from HC emission count because it is harmless for living things. This was accomplished taking advantage of the HC emission level counted by non-methane hydrogen carbon (NMHC), newly stipulated measurements of HC emission level, and can be reduced by more than 80% compared with gasoline. CNG Engine CNG as an alternative fuel in an engine could be divided into three main types; Dual Fuel (Diesel-CNG), Bi-Fuel (Gasoline-CNG) and Dedicated/Mono Fuel (Mardani, 2001) The main problem to commercialise the CNG engine was the lack of engine performance. The CNG engine, either in dualfuel, bi-fuel or dedicated forms is lower performance compare to that of gasoline. Based on the Maxwell and Jones (1995) works, the average power and torque loss of CNG compared to gasoline is in the range of 3 to 19.7% and

1.6 to 21.6%, respectively. Several factors affecting the low engine power and torque, those are loses in volumetric efficiency, low flame speed and absence of fuel evaporation The previous experimental studies have reported that natural gas burns slower than conventional fuels, such as gasoline and diesel (Andrew and Bradley, 1975 and Duan, 1996). Therefore in other to achieve optimum CNG engine performance, the manufacturers of natural gas IC engine need to make design modification to achieve a faster burn while optimising the engine performance. These modifications should consider two effects: the mixer and the in-cylinder flow motion. Many works have been done in the in-cylinder flow motion such as the effect of swirl and tumble, combustion chamber geometry and spark plug locations. Just to mention, Hill and Zhang (1994) studied the effect of swirl and tumble on combustion in SI engine. While the effect of mixer has not been studied sufficiently in the past (Bo and Furuyama, 1997). In this study, the turbulence flows were generated from the mixer. It is well known that the level of turbulence in the combustion chamber just prior to ignition and during combustion process has an important impact on burning rate of the air-fuel mixture. The level of turbulence in the chamber can be influenced by the chamber design through the degree of swirl imparted to the mixture during the intake process and by the squish motion generated as the piston nears top dead centre (Heywood, 1988). High level of turbulence generation lead to faster burning rates, which can result in improved thermal efficiency and reduced level of exhaust emissions. Since generated turbulence through squish has a complicated and required a high standard of safety, the modification of intake process is chosen to produce turbulence effect. In the first stage, the air fuel mixture is a part of intake process that had studied in this paper.

2nd World Engineering Congress Sarawak, Malaysia,22-25 July 2002

2002 WEC

To achieve the optimum CNG engine operation, such requirements should be fulfilled: 1. Operate at high efficiency volumetric 2. Operate at high thermal efficiency 3. Operate at high combustion performance 4. Produce less emission 5. Produce peak torque and power at high speed 6. Minimum storage system weight To design the optimum CNG engine, some engine design consideration need to be counted, as can be seen in Figure 1.

stage of the project, the experiments have done based on the gasoline engine operation.
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CNG Engine Design Considerations

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Supercharge or turbocharge equipment Turbulent device Advance Intake Valve Close Timing

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High Compression Pistons Higher Temperature Resistance for Cylinder Materials Hardened Exhaust valves Combustion chamber shape and spark plug location Fast Burn Combustion Chamber Mechanism New Design of Combustion Chamber Gaseous Injector

Composite Material 3 Way Catalyst EGR

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Engine Tested Crank Angle Dynamometer Crank Encoder TDC Signal Dyno controller CNG Kit CNG Tank

9 Burette 10 Gasoline Tank 11 Air Tank 12 Mixer 13 Flowmeter 14 Valve 15 Water Pump 16 Pump Controller

17 Cooling Water Tank 18 Radiator 19 Thermocouple Interface 20 DAQ System 21 Exhaust Gas Analyser 22 Computer 23 Oscilloscope

Figure 2. An overall view of the test rig facility. MIXERS AND TURBULENCE FLOW In designing the mixer, the mixing characteristic and turbulent effect were considered as the bases requirements. The mixing characteristic related to the venturi and size of volume between the nozzle (the fuel outlet passage) and the throttle valve. While the turbulent effect based on guided flow equipment such as van or shroud. Three types of mixers were used which categorised based on mixing characteristic and turbulent effect. Table 2 presented the type of mixers. Mixer 1 implemented the venturi and nozzle function. Based on Bo and Furuyama (1997), the multi-venturi type mixer promoted more mixing fuel air in the intake passage. Whereas Mixer 2 applied the pre-chamber and surrounding holes to create turbulent. Mixer 3 is totally different with two more function beside the nozzle: adjustable in surface area and has a fan to generate the turbulent flow. Table 1. Engine Specification Name of Parts Size/type Valve/No. of Cylinder 12V-SOCH/4 Bore x Stroke (mm) 75 x 82 Capacity (cc) 1468 Compression Ratio 9.2 Intake valve open 150 BTDC Intake valve close 530 ABDC Exhaust valve open 570 BBDC Exhaust valve close 150 ATDC EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURES

Figure 1. Engine Design Consideration THE METHOD OF INVESTIGATION Experimental Set up The engine was coupled to the dynamometer to dissipate the engine power and to measure the torque produced by the engine at the same time. To run the engine in gas operation, a CNG conversion kit is used. The kit was composed of a gasair mixer unit, two electrically operated solenoid valves for gasoline and CNG cut-off, a timing advance processor to adjust the CNG and gasoline ignition timing, gas pressure regulator and storage cylinder. A 1.5 litre engine used in this test was a popular engine in Malaysia. The specifications of the test engine used in this work are shown in Table 1. For measurement of exhaust emission at the end of exhaust muffler, exhaust gas analyser was used. The pressure transducer and crank angle encoder gave a vital data for the analysis of engine performance. Figure 2 shown the schematic diagram of the experimental rig and the CNG kit. In this investigation, the CNG fuelled engine is not optimised. In order to get the optimum results, the CNG operation required some specific condition such as: high compression ratio, advance ignition timing, supercharge or tubocharge condition, intake valve close timing and a suitable air fuel ratio. Nevertheless, since this is the first

2nd World Engineering Congress Sarawak, Malaysia,22-25 July 2002

2002 WEC

The engine was run to get the steady state condition for half an hour. The engine was started with 1000 revolution per minute (rpm), at which stage the torque, pressure and exhaust emission were measured. The test was held with two different loads. The same procedures were repeated for different speeds in the range of 1500 to 3500 rpm. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS EFFECT OF TURBULENT FLOW ON PRESSURE RISE The experimental results showed that Mixer 3 has the highest pressure rise compared to Mixer 1 and 2, respectively. Figure 2 also showed that Mixer 2 was slightly lower compared to Mixer 1. The experiment proved that the petrol has a higher engine performance, hence pressure rise, compared to CNG operation as can be seen in Figure 2. As already explained before, the difference happens due to lower density effect and un-appropriate operating conditions. This phenomena may happens due to: a. The turbulent flow increased the homogenous mixture that affected the better combustion performance. b. In the case of Mixer 2, with smaller outlet area it has given the lower fuel supply that produces the lower pressure rise. EFFECT OF MIXER SURFACE AREA The experiments also showed that the mixer surface area affected the engine performance. As can be seen in Figure 3, the higher surface is the higher-pressure rise produced. This results have a correlation with Figure 2 that Mixer 2 which has a lower surface are produce slightly lower pressure rise compared to Mixer 1. However, the 6 mm reduction of mixer surface is giving the better pressure rise than that of 4 mm. EFFECT ON AIR FUEL RATIO The experiments also showed that the air fuel ratio affected the CNG engine performance. As can be seen in Figure 4, the highest air fuel ratio gives the highest pressure rise, hence the highest engine performance. Higher air fuel ratio also increased the thermal efficiency of the engine. Since CNG fuel has a higher flammability, implementation of higher air fuel ratio, in some cases even lean and ultra lean burn, will make a higher benefit. THE EMISSION RESULTS Emission of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and unburnt hydrocarbons from a CNG fuelled engine against the engine speed follow similar pattern of gasoline engines. It can be seen on Figure 5 and 6, the carbon monoxide (CO) and dioxide (CO2) were lower than that of gasoline engine for all engine speed, due to low carbon content. The unburnt hydrocarbon (HC) emissions from CNG fuelled engines are also less than that of gasoline engines. Theoretically, the HC emissions from CNG fuelled engines should be lower due to the gaseous from which gives an excellent mixing. However, because of the slow reaction and low flame speed of methane, the combustion could not be

completed before the exhaust valve opens. This can attribute to a high HC. It also should be noticed that the HC from CNG fuelled engines consists mainly of methane that is not photo chemically reactive. Therefore, the non-methane hydrocarbon (NMHC) from CNG fuelled engine is extremely lower than any of gasoline engine as can be seen in Figure 7. No 1 Table 1. Mixer Types Type of Mixers

CONCLUSION An experiment was undertaken to compare the performance and emission of various mixers on the engine fuelled by CNG and gasoline. The following conclusion can be drawn from this work: 1. The mixing characteristic and turbulent flow play an important role in producing homogenous mixture air-gas that affected in higher engine performance. Mixer 3 produced higher pressure rise compare to those of Mixer 1 and 2. In the future, this mixing characteristic and turbulence area will be studied further especially that related to the intake flow.

2nd World Engineering Congress Sarawak, Malaysia,22-25 July 2002

2002 WEC

2. The CNG fuelled engine produced less power than that of found to be follow the similar pattern of gasoline engine. The power reduction occurred due to initial condition of the operating engine was not optimised for CNG fuel running. 3. The CNG operation produced, as expected, lower emission of CO, CO2 and HC for all operating conditions compared to petrol. 4. In the overall, the CNG fuelled engines have a great possibility to be comparable to that of gasoline since it has clearly advantages in reducing the emissions and cheaper price. Nevertheless, to reach the optimum performance, the CNG fuelled engine required some modification that will be studied further.
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Figure 4. Effect of Air Fuel Ratio on Cylinder Pressure

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Figure 2. Effect of Mixers and Petrol on cylinder Pressure

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Figure 5. Effect of Engine Speed on CO

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Figure 3. Effect of Mixer Surface Area On Cylinder Pressure

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Figure 6. Effect of Engine Speed on CO2

2nd World Engineering Congress Sarawak, Malaysia,22-25 July 2002

300 250 200

2002 WEC

Mixer 1 Mixer 2 Petrol

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Figure 7. Effect of Engine Speed on ppm HC

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The authors would like to express their thanks to Wong Hong Mun and Phuah Puan Seng for helping the experimental rig and fabricated the mixer and the Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environmental of Malaysia for funding the project by the Intensified Research Priority Area (IRPA) Grant. REFERENCES Andrew, A.E. and Bradley, D. The burning velocity of methane-air mixtures. Comb. Flame, 24, p. 275-288 (1975) Bo Yan Xu and Mikio Furuyama, Visualization of natural gas-air mixing flow in the mixer of a CNG vehicle. JSAE Review 18, p. 57-82 (1997) Duan, S.Y. Using Natural Gas in Engines: Laboratory experience with the use of natural gas fuel in IC engines. IMechE Seminar Publication, p.39-46. (1996) Heywood, J.B. Internal Combustion Engine Fundamentals. Mc Graw-Hill, New York, (1988) Hill, P.G. and Zhang, D. Effect of Swirl and tumble on combustion in spark-ignition engine. Proc. Energy Combust. Sci., 20, p. 373-429 (1994) Mardani Ali Sera and Rosli Abu Bakar (2001) The Comparison Study On 1.5 L Engine Performance And Emission Using Gasoline And Natural Gas Fuel Malaysian Science and Techmology Congress 2001 Maxwell T.T. and Jones J.C. (1995) Alternative Fuels: Emissions, Economics and Performance. USA Society of Automotive Engineers: SAE Inc.