In-Cylinder NOx Reduction Using Different Camshaft Timings on Diesel Engines

Author(s):  
Lucas Comitre ◽  
Flavio G. Lehmann

Over time, environmental protection standards have become more strict and complex. Nitrogen oxides (NOx) are regulated pollutants produced by combustion in a diesel engine. In this project, camshaft timing modifications were studied as a way of reducing NOx emission levels while using low cost hardware. Different valve timing strategies were proposed and modelled using engine simulation. This project was based on two concepts. The first was to open the intake valve during the exhaust stroke, thus expelling burnt gases from the cylinder into the intake manifold and then later re-admitting these gases into the cylinder during the intake stroke of the next cycle. The second was to open the exhaust valve during the intake stroke, allowing burnt gases from the exhaust manifold to enter the cylinder at the same time as the fresh charge enters. Both technologies studied were able to recirculate the exhaust gases without an external EGR system. The EGR amount was controlled by either an intake throttle or an exhaust throttle. The amount of EGR was predicted using engine simulation. The brake-specific fuel consumption (BSFC) and brake-specific NOx (BSNOx) trade off was the main criterion used to select the best technology, although other features such as predicted manifold pressures and engine-out soot were also considered. The results indicate that, by using increased amounts of EGR while varying the intake or exhaust throttle position, NOx emissions can be reduced with a slight BSFC penalty. These methods are thus a low cost means of reducing engine-out NOx emissions.

2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bradley R. Adams ◽  
Dave H. Wang

Abstract A DOE-funded program was used to understand the mechanisms that control the formation of NOx during the combustion of steelmaking by-product fuels and to investigate possible low-cost control options to minimize the NOx emissions. This paper discusses the CFD modeling results of NOx emissions in a reheat furnace. The reheat furnace has a total of 20 burners distributed over three firing zones. The furnace is fired at a rate of 250 × 106 Btu/hr and an overall stoichiometric ratio of 1.06 (fuel lean). Fuels with heating values of approximate 500 Btu/SCF were examined, including coke oven gas (COG), blast furnace gas (BFG) and a blend of COG, BFG, natural gas (NG) and nitrogen. A good range of process variables was modeled to examine effects of fuel type, air preheat, stoichiometric ratio, firing rate and burner stoichiometry distribution on NOx emissions. Modeling results indicated that NOx formation in the reheat furnace is dominated by thermal NO, with some variation depending on the fuel fired. Temperature profiles showed an effective separation of the furnace interior into top and bottom zones as a result of the steel slab barrier. Higher temperatures characterized the bottom zone and elevated NOx levels as a result of the confined space and enhanced fuel air mixing provided by the slab supports. Results also showed that reburning of NOx plays a significant role in final NOx emissions with 30–40% of NOx formed being reduced by reburning in most cases. Modeling identified that operating the side burners in each burner zone slightly substoichiometric (while maintaining the overall furnace stoichiometry at 1.06) provided significant NOx reduction via reburning. NOx reductions of 23% and 30% were predicted when firing with COG and COG-NG-Air fuels, respectively. Overall furnace exit temperatures and heat flux profiles were not significantly affected by the biased firing.


Author(s):  
Michael R. Buchman ◽  
Amos G. Winter

This paper presents a method for turbocharging single cylinder four stroke internal combustion engines, an experimental setup used to test this method, and the results from this experiment. A turbocharged engine has better fuel economy, cost efficiency, and power density than an equivalently sized, naturally aspirated engine. Most multi-cylinder diesel engines are turbocharged for this reason. However, due to the timing mismatch between the exhaust stroke (when the turbocharger is powered) and the intake stroke (when the engine intakes air), turbocharging is not used in commercial single cylinder engines. Single cylinder engines are ubiquitous in developing world off-grid power applications such as tractors, generators, and water pumps due to their low cost. Turbocharging these engines could give users a lower cost and more fuel efficient engine. The proposed solution is to add an air capacitor, in the form of a large volume intake manifold, between the turbocharger compressor and the engine intake to smooth out the flow. This research builds on a previous theoretical study where the turbocharger, capacitor, and engine system were modeled an-alytically. In order to validate the theoretical model, an experimental setup was created around a single cylinder four stroke diesel engine. A typical developing world engine was chosen and was fitted with a turbocharger. A series of sensors were added to this engine to measure pressure, temperature, and power output. Our tests showed that a turbocharger and air capacitor could be successfully fitted to a single cylinder engine to increase intake air density by forty-three percent and peak power output by twenty-nine percent.


Author(s):  
Richard F. Abrams ◽  
Robert Faia

Babcock Power Environmental (BPE), a Babcock Power Inc. company, has developed a new, innovative, high-efficiency NOx reduction technology designed to greatly reduce the NOx emissions from waste to energy (WTE) boilers at relatively low cost. This “tail-end” system uses Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) to achieve the high reduction performance. Conventional SCR catalyst cannot be used in the traditional “high-dust” location, downstream of the economizer because constituents in the ash would poison the catalyst quickly, rendering it useless. Thus, the Regenerative Selective Catalytic Reduction (RSCR®) system is designed to operate at the end of the plant before the flue gas is discharged to the stack. The process utilizes a reactant (usually aqueous ammonia) to be added to the flue gas stream upstream of the RSCR to reduce NOx to harmless reaction products, N2 and H2O. The RSCR combines the efficient heat recovery, temperature control, reactant mixing, and catalyst into a single unit and provides the maximum NOx reduction and heat recovery practical. The paper will describe the overall predicted performance of a typical WTE boiler plant using this new technology. The paper will also provide actual operating data on the RSCR, which has been retrofitted to four biomass-fired units.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 18-33
Author(s):  
Sylwia Janta-Lipińska ◽  

The nitrogen oxides in a flame of burning fuel can be created by many mechanisms. The amount of NOx concentration emitted to the ground atmosphere mainly depends on the type of fuel burned in the industrial and heating boilers. Changes in the country's thermal policy and requirements that are set for us by the European Union States are forcing us to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Directed metered ballast method is one of the most attractive techniques for reducing NOx emissions. In recent years, moisture injection technology is still investigated on low and medium power thermal power boilers operating on gaseous fuel. The goal of this work was to perform the investigations of the process of a moisture injection into the zones of decisive influence (SDW-I and SDW-II) on steam and water boilers: DKVR 10-13, DKVR 20-13, DE 25-14 and PTVM-50. The obtained results clearly show how the proposed method affects NOx reduction and boiler efficiency.


Author(s):  
Lars O. Nord ◽  
David R. Schoemaker ◽  
Helmer G. Andersen

A study was initiated to investigate the possibility of significantly reducing the NOx emissions at a power plant utilizing, among other manufacturers, ALSTOM GT11 type gas turbines. This study is limited to one of the GT11 type gas turbines on the site. After the initial study phase, the project moved on to a mechanical implementation stage, followed by thorough testing and tuning. The NOx emissions were to be reduced at all ambient conditions, but particularly at cold conditions (below 0°C) where a NOx reduction of more than 70% was the goal. The geographical location of the power plant means cold ambient conditions for a large part of the year. The mechanical modifications included the addition of Helmholtz damper capacity with an approximately 30% increase in volume for passive thermo-acoustic instability control, significant piping changes to the fuel distribution system in order to change the burner configuration, and installation of manual valves for throttling of the fuel gas to individual burners. Subsequent to the mechanical modifications, significant time was spent on testing and tuning of the unit to achieve the wanted NOx emissions throughout a major part of the load range. The tuning was, in addition to the main focus of the NOx reduction, also focused on exhaust temperature spread, combustion stability, CO emissions, as well as other parameters. The measurement data was acquired through a combination of existing unit instrumentation and specific instrumentation added to aid in the tuning effort. The existing instrumentation readings were polled from the control system. The majority of the added instrumentation was acquired via the FieldPoint system from National Instruments. The ALSTOM AMODIS plant-monitoring system was used for acquisition and analysis of all the data from the various sources. The project was, in the end, a success with low NOx emissions at part load and full load. As a final stage of the project, the CO emissions were also optimized resulting in a nice compromise between the important parameters monitored, namely NOx emissions, CO emissions, combustion stability, and exhaust temperature distribution.


2014 ◽  
Vol 663 ◽  
pp. 336-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohd Farid Muhamad Said ◽  
Zulkarnain Abdul Latiff ◽  
Aminuddin Saat ◽  
Mazlan Said ◽  
Shaiful Fadzil Zainal Abidin

In this paper, engine simulation tool is used to investigate the effect of variable intake manifold and variable valve timing technologies on the engine performance at full load engine conditions. Here, an engine model of 1.6 litre four cylinders, four stroke spark ignition (SI) engine is constructed using GT-Power software to represent the real engine conditions. This constructed model is then correlated to the experimental data to make sure the accuracy of this model. The comparison results of volumetric efficiency (VE), intake manifold air pressure (MAP), exhaust manifold back pressure (BckPress) and brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC) show very well agreement with the differences of less than 4%. Then this correlated model is used to predict the engine performance at various intake runner lengths (IRL) and various intake valve open (IVO) timings. Design of experiment and optimisation tool are applied to obtain optimum parameters. Here, several configurations of IRL and IVO timing are proposed to give several options during the engine development work. A significant improvement is found at configuration of variable IVO timing and variable IRL compared to fixed IVO timing and fixed IRL.


Author(s):  
P. L. Dartnell ◽  
C. L. Goodacre ◽  
P. V. Lamarque

A Heron combustion chamber engine of 2 litre capacity has been utilized to investigate the effect of combustion chamber shape, increased mixture movement, valve timing, mixture formation, and reaction in the exhaust system on engine performance and level of exhaust emissions using the seven-mode U.S. Federal cycle. Such factors as carburettor weakening and limitation of intake manifold vacuum during overrun have been included in this investigation, and it has been shown that it is possible to reduce exhaust emissions and also satisfy the current U.S. requirements with an engine giving acceptable performance, improved economy, and unaffected reliability. Much of the information reported may be negative in terms of improvement to exhaust emissions by detailed engine design. Nevertheless, some positive conclusions have been reached as a result of this work, and it is hoped that this will draw forth more informed discussion than the authors have been able to assemble from the work attempted with one basic engine.


Author(s):  
Haoyang Liu ◽  
Wenkai Qian ◽  
Min Zhu ◽  
Suhui Li

Abstract To avoid flashback issues of the high-H2 syngas fuel, current syngas turbines usually use non-premixed combustors, which have high NOx emissions. A promising solution to this dilemma is RQL (rich-burn, quick-mix, lean-burn) combustion, which not only reduces NOx emissions, but also mitigates flashback. This paper presents a kinetics modeling study on NOx emissions of a syngas-fueled gas turbine combustor using RQL architecture. The combustor was simulated with a chemical reactor network model in CHEMKIN-PRO software. The combustion and NOx formation reactions were modeled using a detailed kinetics mechanism that was developed for syngas. Impacts of combustor design/operating parameters on NOx emissions were systematically investigated, including combustor outlet temperature, rich/lean air flow split and residence time split. The mixing effects in both the rich-burn zone and the quick-mix zone were also investigated. Results show that for an RQL combustor, the NOx emissions initially decrease and then increase with combustor outlet temperature. The leading parameters for NOx control are temperature-dependent. At typical modern gas turbine combustor operating temperatures (e.g., < 1890 K), the air flow split is the most effective parameter for NOx control, followed by the mixing at the rich-burn zone. However, as the combustor outlet temperature increases, the impacts of air flow split and mixing in the rich-burn zone on NOx reduction become less pronounced, whereas both the residence time split and the mixing in the quick-mix zone become important.


Author(s):  
Steven J. Greenberg ◽  
Neil K. McDougald ◽  
Christopher K. Weakley ◽  
Robert M. Kendall ◽  
Leonel O. Arellano

ALZETA Corporation has developed surface-stabilized fuel injectors for use with lean premixed combustors which provide extended turndown and ultra-low NOx emission performance. These injectors use a patented technique to form interacting radiant and blue-flame zones immediately above a selectively-perforated porous metal surface. This allows stable operation at low reaction temperatures. A previous ASME paper (IJPGC2002-26088) described the development of this technology from the proof-of-concept stage to prototype testing. In 2002 development of these fuel injectors for the 5.5 MW turbine accelerated. Additional single-injector rig tests were performed which also demonstrated ultra-low emissions of NOX and CO at pressures up to 1.68 MPa (16.6 atm) and inlet temperatures up to 670 °K (750 °F). A pressurized multi injector ‘sector rig’ test was conducted in which two injectors were operated simultaneously in the same geometric configuration as that expected in the engine combustor liner. The multi-injector package was operated with various combinations of fired and unfired injectors, which resulted in low emissions performance and no adverse affects due to injector proximity. To date sub-3 ppm NOx emissions with sub-10 ppm CO emissions have been obtained over an operating range of 0.18 to 1.68 MPa (1.8 to 16.6 atm), inlet temperatures from 340 to 670 °K (186 to 750 °F), and adiabatic flame temperatures from 1740 to 1840 °K (2670 to 2850 °F). A full scale multi-injector engine simulation is scheduled for the beginning of 2003, with engine tests beginning later that year.


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