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Technical Paper

Methane Number Effect on the Efficiency of a Downsized, Dedicated, High Performance Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) Direct Injection Engine

2017-03-28
2017-01-0776
A fundamental requirement for natural gas (NG) and renewable methane (e.g. bio-methane or power-to-gas methane) as automotive fuel is reliable knock resistance; to enable optimization of dedicated NG engines with high compression ratio and high turbocharger boost (which enables considerable engine downsizing factors). In order to describe the knock resistance of NG, the Methane Number (MN) has been introduced. The lowest MN which generally can be found in any NG is 65, and the vast majority of NG (~ 99.8%) is delivered with a MN above 70. The MN of bio-methane and power-to-gas methane is usually far above 80. Thus, from an automotive point of view any methane fuel should at least provide a minimum Methane Number of 70 at any point of sale. But the European draft standard describing the automotive CNG fuel quality so far proposes a minimum MN limit of 65.
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