Effect of Dissimilar Valve Lift on a bi-fuel CNG Engine Operation

• Main Authors: D., Ramasamy, Z. A., Zainal, K., Kadirgama, Briggs, Horizon Walker-Gitano
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2016
• Subjects: TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General); TJ Mechanical engineering and machinery; TL Motor vehicles. Aeronautics. Astronautics
• Online Access: http://umpir.ump.edu.my/id/eprint/13954/1/fkm-2016-deva-Effect%20of%20Dissimilar%20Valve%20Lift%20on%20a%20bi.pdf; http://umpir.ump.edu.my/id/eprint/13954/; http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2016.06.116
• Institution: Universiti Malaysia Pahang

Abstract The combustion of spark ignition engines converted to bi-fuel CNG is unstable and proper air and fuel mixing strategy is a concern. Also, CNG fuel causes the coefficient of variation for indicated mean effective pressure (COVimep) higher than 10 which is into the region of unstable combustion. In order to create stable combustion more turbulence is required. This paper studies the valve movement with dissimilar valve lift (DVL) to increase swirl in the engine. The intake valve is the last point of airflow entry into an engine and the modification of the movement can contribute to increase turbulence. Three {DVL} setting simulated via computational fluid dynamics (CFD) gave improvement in peak pressure by 4 and a 32.2 improvement in flame propagation speed compared to baseline CNG. Engine testing shows that, the engine {COVimep} improves up to 8.7, while efficiency improves by 5.7 and {BSFC} is reduced by 5.4 respectively with the 1Â mm {DVL} at 4000Â rpm compared to baseline CNG. The rate of heat release (ROHR) also shows early heat release of the fuel. The novelty is better mileage for future {CNG} engine design.