Dilution and Injection Pressure Effects on Ignition and Onset of Soot at Threshold-Sooting Conditions by Simultaneous PAH-PLIF and Soot-PLII Imaging in a Heavy Duty Optical Diesel Engine 2019-01-0553

Although accumulated in-cylinder soot can be measured by various optical techniques, discerning soot formation rates from oxidation rates is more difficult. Various optical measurements have pointed toward ways to affect in-cylinder soot oxidation, but evidence of effects of operational variables on soot formation is less plentiful. The formation of soot and its precursors, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), are strongly dependent on temperature, so factors affecting soot formation may be more evident at low-temperature combustion conditions. Here, in-cylinder PAHs are imaged by planar laser-induced fluorescence (PAH-PLIF) using three different excitation wavelengths of 355, 532, and 633 nm, to probe three different size-classes of PAH from 2-3 to 10+ rings. Simultaneous planar laser-induced incandescence of soot (soot-PLII) using 1064-nm excitation provides complementary imaging of soot formation near inception. To achieve low combustion temperatures at the threshold of PAH and soot formation, the engine operating conditions are highly diluted, with intake-O₂ mole-fractions as low as 7.5%. The optical diagnostics show that increasing dilution delays the inception of PAH by over 2.5 ms as the intake-O₂ mole-fraction decreases from 15.0% to 9.0%. At 7.5% intake-O₂, no large PAH or soot are formed, while the 9.0% intake-O₂ condition forms PAH but virtually no detectable soot. Conditions with 10.0% or more intake-O₂ form both PAH and soot. For the threshold-sooting condition with 10.0% intake-O₂, large PAH typically forms broadly throughout the cross-section of the downstream jets and along the bowl-wall. Soot appears after PAH, and in narrower ribbons in the jet-jet interaction region. These soot ribbons are on the periphery of the PAH, near the diffusion flame, where the highest temperatures are expected. With increasing intake-O₂, the delay time between soot and PAH shortens, and soot tends to shift upstream to the jet region prior to wall impingement, though still on the periphery of the PAH. The spatial distributions of PAH and soot overlap slightly under these threshold-sooting conditions, with soot typically surrounding the PAH. This may indicate that temperatures are only high enough for soot formation on the jet periphery, near the diffusion flame. The minimal overlap also suggests that PAHs are rapidly consumed and/or adsorbed when soot is formed. Additionally, increasing the fuel-injection pressure from 533 to 800 and then to 1200 bar increases soot and large PAH formation, which is opposite to the trend for conventional diesel combustion.