Experimental Study on Ammonia/OME Combustion in a Dual-Fuel Engine with Emphasis on Highly Diluted Intake Air Conditions 2023-01-0283

Ammonia, which is considered as an excellent hydrogen carrier, could potentially become a clean fuel for direct use in ICE.

An experimental setup with a strongly modified inline four-cylinder (I4) heavy duty Diesel engine was used to study different combustion modes of ammonia in ICE. The fourth cylinder of that engine was operated in a monovalent mode using either OME or Diesel fuel. Its complete exhaust stream was fed into the first cylinder of the same engine, which was operated on a dual-fuel mode by utilizing ammonia port injection and OME or Diesel pilot injection to ignite the mixture. The fourth cylinder of the I4 heavy duty engine can be operated at conditions between idle and full load and at different stoichiometries (λ) to impact both the temperature and the oxygen concentration at the exhaust of that cylinder. Since the first cylinder is fed by the complete exhaust stream of the fourth, the intake conditions of the first cylinder can be controlled appropriately and various ammonia combustion modes can be realized.

Emissions measurements at the intake and the exhaust of the first cylinder at different speeds and loads show the impact of the different combustion modes, especially due to temperature and oxygen content variations, on NOx and combustion efficiency. Chemical kinetics calculations have been elaborated to explain some of the main observations.